So I still haven’t really buried my nose in the books. I
have, however, spent some time making sure that I’m well prepared to enter the
Examination Hall Of DOOOOOOOM. We have to present a bunch of identification
documents and such to be admitted, and I’m usually very bad at remembering
those things. And if I fail, I want to fail because my work was inadequate, and
not because I didn’t even get the chance to be inadequate, damnit.
I was going through the examination guidelines and they were
all pretty standard until I got to the rule that says that “Smoking is not
allowed in the examination venue”. At first I was like “duh”, but then I kind of went “Bummer”,
because if they hadn’t explicitly put that there I might have been able to
light up if all those fucking essays started getting to me, and wouldn’t that
be awesome? Then I started thinking about why exactly they felt it necessary to
include that in the list. Had there been recent incidents of people getting up
in the middle of an exam to take a smoke break? But then they were told that
they weren’t allowed to leave the room until they were finished writing, and
then they went like “Fine, then I’ll smoke in here”, and the supervisors went “You
can’t do that”, and then the smoker said “Where does it say that?” and the supervisors said “Uhm…now that you
mention it, nowhere, really” and then the smoker didn’t say anything ‘cause he
was too busy lighting up like fifty cigarettes and passing them out.
Then I realized that that was just wishful thinking and I
got back to reading the rest of the rules.
And then, casually tacked on at the end, almost as if it
were a mere afterthought, they inform us that oh yeah, by the way “Firearms are
not allowed inside the examination venue”. And I got to thinking, why the
fuck would somebody bring a gun into the exam hall? Were they going to hold the
lecturers hostage until they gave them the right answers? Also, note that it’s
just firearms that aren’t allowed. Other lethal weapons, however, are
apparently fine. So I’ve decided that I’m going to rock up for my Theory of
Literature exam with a bow and arrow and at least
two swords.
My first exam is on Monday. I’m looking forward to writing
in a smoke-filled room where a gunfight could break out at any second. Because
this is South Africa, and if the room were quiet and peaceful we’d all probably
be like “What the fuck? Where’s the noise and the violence and the pollution? I
can’t concentrate under these strange circumstances!”
This made me choke on my tea it was so funny! In the UK, if somebody dies in your exam, everyone in the room automatically get's an A... it's safe to say I've google 'hit man' and 'lethal poisons' more than necessary around the exam period!
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