The Unprecedented Exam Week

As I mentioned in the past few weeks, the final exams of the last semester were postponed to the beginning of this sem. Actually, it’s not an exciting news for most of us students, because we have spent at least one week on systematic review on the coursework, hence, the postpone just make those time meaningless. And the coming winter vacation is also ruined in view of the stress and anxiety on the undone exams.

I have much more exams to take (nine courses) compared with my classmates (four or five courses in average), which is the sequel of my most adventurous experience—being a visiting student in NUS for one semester. To be more detailed, I submitted an application to delay my final exams in my second year to my third year because I had to fly to Singapore for the visiting program during the exam week, which was ultimately approved. Therefore, I got twice the number of exams when I returned and should finish them in the exam weeks that lasted two weeks.

What’s worse to me, the dean’s office of my university (we have no idea what they truly care) decided to compress the time scale for exams, namely, from two weeks to one weeks plus one weekend. That really made me exhausted because they were ridiculously “one hundred percent confident on me” and organized seven exams in four days for this poor year 3 student, from Probability to Maoism and from University Physics to Molecular Immunity. To cope with the X-game-like timetable, I forced myself to cut off the last 11 days of the winter vacation to go over the books that has already been unfamiliar for me. I had to say I was really anxious and nervous at that time because the outside of my room is the green spring with flowers and songs but the inside is in contrast crowed with complicated formulars, symbols, essays and draft papers covered with a mass of figures.

To be honest, my competitive mood and the afraid of being a failure on exams drive me up a wall in those days. And the consequence is my worsened health conditions. Let’s say the sudden break of acne and pimples on my face and the difficulty to fall asleep. Luckily, the nightmare is almost over now, and I’ve finished eight exams in the first week of examination. Whereas the last will approach to me next Sunday evening, that is to say 7 days later, I will not be so exhausted any more. Besides the sense of run-down, I am more concerning about the scores, which are crucial to my application for graduate study in a top university or institute. The exams I’ve taken are not easy to me, I admit, thus the anxiety of getting a quite bad GPA stucks my mind at the moment. However, I am already too frustrated and tired to make any complaints on the exam plan and the potential result. Besides I never heard some of my friends, who also have five or six exams crowding in these few days, complain desperately and endlessly. Hence, I bring myself a soul soother that says:

“At least you make it and just let alone the scores, Weiping. Perhaps you are the only one in the history of XJTU to take 7 exams in 4 days and 9 exams in total. Proud of you”

From now on I am able to free myself from the desks and chairs and care about other stuffs. My websites, my applications for graduate studies, my science and lab work, my beloved rice noodle, all my dear friends in this universe… Yes, they are the pearls and jewels the world fetches, and now my job is to admire the beauty of them and wait for the announcing day for the exam results. We will see what happens.