Sneak Peek: NOT the end of the story

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Each time when the 'minute hand' touches the number - 12, indicating it’s 5 pm, on the day of our exam, don’t think that it is the end of the story. You might think we will be driving home happily after that, humming and whistling away, looking forward to a night of partying. In actual fact, it is the reverse.

This is the time when my thought goes on 5^th gear (when I should have been doing that in the exam hall), racing through the questions, over and over, looking for the possibility I might have answered the question from a totally wrong perspective, or that there are certain important aspects which the examiner is looking for that I might have overlooked. And this incessant evaluation process continues on for days, depending on how tricky the questions were.

Anything could happen in the exam hall, which can really and truly throw you off balance, and get you into the panic mode. Here are a few scenarios.

Of course, for the first 10 to 20 minutes of the exam, you are already such a nervous wreck your mind is almost always a blank, while you stare at the questions trying to digest what it wants, no matter how easy they are. Even before reading the questions, you are already in a panic mode, due to the waiting and anticipating.

When you think you have prepared yourself well covering all the expected difficult questions that challenges the width and depth of your analysis capacity, only to find that the questions that comes out are so bluntly and outright easy, you just do not know how to tune your complex mind down to the basic, you’re staring at the blank paper for like a full 15 minutes or more, while the clock is ticking away.

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When you think it’s a fairly easy topic, you take it easy, and go in only to find that they throw you questions, that requires you to do something short of an autopsy finding, you end up staring at the blank paper for a full 15 to 20 minutes again.

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And all the time without fail, you will find that you are sure to have missed out something in the exam hall, something you’re supposed to do but you did not, despite the fact that you have already prepared a check-list that you know you must go through before leaving the exam hall. That's because, in your panic mode, you forgot that you have a check-list...!!! f!@#$?#!!...

So then you start to beat yourself up for overlooking this and that, and your mind just go on and on, looking for more things to throw out. Basically it just want to go through the entire process and questions minute by minute, and then go through it again second and third round, until you could find no more fault to highlight. This could go on till about a week or more.

The extent of this finding will determine how hard I need to work on my two assignments, because the exam contributes 50% to the passing mark. That is if I can still do anything to salvage the assignments. Two remaining week isn’t exactly a lot of time for us to do damage control, because our next module would have started by then and we will need to start reading up and going through the "new" assignment questions, case studies and carry out online research.

And that is STILL not the end of the story, mind you...

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While I’m rushing on my 2 assignments, I will discover more stuffs that I did wrong, or that I should have done in the exam hall, wtf....!!!

It is quite a painful process, I must say. It really does test us in every situation and from every angle.

Let’s hope that by the time I reach my 3^rd or 4^th module, as what my seniors always say (huh..!?!? 3rd or 4th module, that's still a looong way to go...!!), I would have been seasoned enough to know how to hold my ground....