Last wednesday 21/6/2006, was was my worst exam paper ever...
Sad to say that i did pretty bad for that paper. I'm probably sitting on the border between a pass and a fail. (For all my exams, it had always been a question of distinction or not... but this time, for this paper, it's a question of fail or pass...)
However, towards the end of the day, i felt suprisingly good because of that paper. No joke...
This is my story:
5mins before the exam, I was feeling pretty confident as always.
At the time of the exam, i was getting a little nervous... Suddenly, i had a very eerie feeling that everything is gonna be catastrophic.
And by the time exam starts, i was stumbled... Back then, staring at the paper was as if i was staring at nothing at all. It was then i realised that i was experiencing a black out.. A MAJOR one... I forgot all those related engineering formulas. Heck, i even forgot my own name... I had to refer to my student ID, not just once, but from time to time just to find out what my name is.. . It was so bad till the stage that i could barely recognise my own face on my ID card...
Yes, it was a very freaky moment...
Yup, i panicked...at the wrong time...
The next thing i tried to do is to calm myself down, even convinced myself to take a few deep breath and all this will be gone...
But NOoooo.... it got worse.
My heart beats faster, slowly sinking all external sound and voice until it dominates my auditory senses...
I can almost feel every pint of blood coursing through my veins...
I can almost feel the extreme heat emiting from my body...
I was getting more and more paranoid by the second..
And i sat there, staring at the exam paper, contemplating at virtually nothing...
Thats when those unnecessary crippling thoughts sets in.. I mumbled to myself: "Crap...I'm gonna die, i'm gonna die... Crap...What the heck... NOoooooo"
Pathetic isn't it??
Thats exactly how i felt in the 1st hour.
For the 2nd hour... I got tired of the "I'm dead" mentality... Instead of condemning myself, i tried to calm myself down...again. I told myself a millions times: "Calm down, calm down...go back to the basics.. assess the question properly... read the question word by word...take it slow... Chill..."
Glad to say i did cool down a bit, and began to read the exam questions properly.
But NOOoooo.... My panic attack came back as soon as the fella in front of me stood up and hand up his paper. Minutes later, another fella hand up his paper, and another and another one started to leave the exam room.
At that time, i can't stand the atmosphere anymore. I wanted to leave the room, the exam and everything else... After all, i can't answer any of the question, why bother trying??
The 2nd hour is like a deathrow to me... I spent most of my time flipping the question paper and not writting anything on my answer booklet.. Well, i did manage to produce some artistic sketch... Other than that, i wrote nothing...
And in the 3rd hour (the last hour), i had better salvage whatever marks i could get...
I shut myself from the world and meditate for bout 5mins... Hoho, now this is when i started to calm myself down. And for the next 15mins, I did more than what i did in the previous 2 hours...
Then i started to convince myself that, this paper isn't that hard after all..
(actually to any other student, the paper is not hard at all, but to me...it's a challenge since i black out!!) (and yeah, i find it extremely difficult)...
Anyway, in the last hour, i wasn't thinking about getting a distinction anymore...
I was thinking of getting as much marks as possible in my current situation...
After the exam, i felt super shitty as if I am some pathetic loser....
Out of 4 questions, i only managed to do 1.... And the other 3 questions, i scribbled some random words, equations, and numbers hoping to get some marks...
And that is very bad!!! There is chance that i might actually fail the paper.
But hey, i gave it all my best in my current situation...
I have no idea why, i felt kinda good after some time....
Even though i did really bad in this paper (to the extend that i might fail), but for some reason, i felt quite good...
Its probably because i've never felt this calm in a panic situation.... Actually, I felt great!!! Probably that's my defination of "the joy of confronting a fear a failure"...
(besides, i was lucky enough not to go on a berserk mode...)
And by the time exam starts, i was stumbled... Back then, staring at the paper was as if i was staring at nothing at all. It was then i realised that i was experiencing a black out.. A MAJOR one... I forgot all those related engineering formulas. Heck, i even forgot my own name... I had to refer to my student ID, not just once, but from time to time just to find out what my name is.. . It was so bad till the stage that i could barely recognise my own face on my ID card...
Yup, i panicked...at the wrong time...
I was getting more and more paranoid by the second..
For the 2nd hour... I got tired of the "I'm dead" mentality... Instead of condemning myself, i tried to calm myself down...again. I told myself a millions times: "Calm down, calm down...go back to the basics.. assess the question properly... read the question word by word...take it slow... Chill..."
At that time, i can't stand the atmosphere anymore. I wanted to leave the room, the exam and everything else... After all, i can't answer any of the question, why bother trying??
And in the 3rd hour (the last hour), i had better salvage whatever marks i could get...
I've been itching for a PC speaker lately.....
