How many of you have woken up at 3 AM and sat bolt upright in bed, your heart racing, right after a dream about failing an exam?
How many of you will say, about two weeks before exams, that your Boggart will be the same as Hermione's, a teacher informing you that you have failed all your exams?
The thing is, almost everyone, at some point, has totally freaked about exams.
And obviously they have a right to. I mean, it takes a pretty thick-skinned kid not to freak what with adults all around them intoning in voices of doom about the importance of exams.
It goes something like this:
Adults: The Day of Reckoning draws near. Prepare, for your souls will be weighed upon the scales, and all the 85+ scoring kids will be rewarded with higher expectations and others will be doomed to extended hours of study and no TV.
Kids: This is it, the apocalypse...whoa-o, I'm wakin' up, I FEEL IT IN MY BONES, enough to make my SYSTEMS BLOW!
How many of you will say, about two weeks before exams, that your Boggart will be the same as Hermione's, a teacher informing you that you have failed all your exams?
The thing is, almost everyone, at some point, has totally freaked about exams.
And obviously they have a right to. I mean, it takes a pretty thick-skinned kid not to freak what with adults all around them intoning in voices of doom about the importance of exams.
It goes something like this:
Adults: The Day of Reckoning draws near. Prepare, for your souls will be weighed upon the scales, and all the 85+ scoring kids will be rewarded with higher expectations and others will be doomed to extended hours of study and no TV.
Kids: This is it, the apocalypse...whoa-o, I'm wakin' up, I FEEL IT IN MY BONES, enough to make my SYSTEMS BLOW!
| Well, at least we're not trapped in an underground prison as stuffed animals fight to the death above our heads... |
We need more pyschologists researching the effects of exams on students, because it's kind of scary. We all react in such different ways...
Kid 1: The wall is so nice. So...plain. The evenness of the colour...and then that little crack at the top that emphasises it.
Kid 2: Ohmigodohmigodohmigod what's that formula about acceleration there's like v minus u by t and then there's one more, two a into s equals to something, what does s stand for, GAAAAH I'm freaking out here.
Kid 3: A single drop can disturb the surface of a lake. We must stay calm. What is the purpose of exams in our lives?
Kid 4: I will pass this exam, I will pass this exam, I will pass this exam. Power of positive thinking. I will pass this exam, I will pass this exam...
Kid 5: Is the angle of incidence measured from the normal or the surface of the material? Because it makes a difference, how am I going to calculate sin i by sin r otherwise to find the refractive index.
Kid 6: Are you sure sin i by sin r is refractive index? I thought that was speed of light in vacuum by speed of light in medium.
Kid 7: BOOM!
(Everyone turns to look)
Kid 2: Do you mind? Some of us are trying to study here.
Kid 7: Sorry. My brain just exploded.
Kid 5: Oh horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee! Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!
Kid 6: What's that?
Kid 1: There's just the one crack. What are you talking about?
Kid 6: No, not you. What is confusion's masterpiece?
Kid 4: That's some Shakespeare thing. Macbeth, I think.
Kid 5: Confusion now hath made his masterpiece...EXAMS!
Forget Duncan's murder. Confusion's masterpiece is exams.
Shakespeare, you wasted such an awesome dialogue (Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee, how cool is that?) on some king's death?
See, this is one of the main problems with Shakespeare. He came up with such cool phrasing and then used them for things kids can't relate to.
Of course, it's highly possible kids weren't exactly his target audience.
Sad, he didn't recognise the huge potential of such a market.
Notice how I digress? That's another symptom of the phenomenon we were just discussing...
Yep. I have exams.
