The time is set; 2 hours to get the job done. No do-overs, no second chances. This is it. Time fuming down your neck as if it’s the one with something to lose. Unforgiving and cruel. When the clock strikes 10 am, it will give its verdict; the outcome depends on you. Sweat drips down your back trying to melt down the rock you’ve been carrying the past few days. In this decade of Google, Mr. know-it-all, one thing defiles history and remains intact; exams always make you nervous and weak. Especially the timed ones. Those are the worst. They make you wish you were back suckling your mother’s breasts. At least, that was easy. Cry and get your reward. Now, tears bring no mercy. As soon as you get into high school, it’s a man-eat-man maze.
I detest exams almost as much as cold showers. Okay, probably more. I consider myself smart. But exams usually bring me tumbling back to earth. My ego usually bursts into layers of self-doubt and whispers that I might not be as intelligent as I thought. Back during the K.C.P.E exams, Kiswahili, to be exact, I blacked out for a cool 30 minutes. Reading the first passage was similar to reading a Greek manuscript. I would have been better off configuring a nuclear bomb than deciphering what ‘kielezi’ meant and how they complement ‘misamiatis’. It was like a Mazda Demio trying to pull a stalled truck. My brain couldn’t handle it, I was brain dead in a world of being unbothered and fuck-this-shit. Excuse my thoughts!
Fast forward to 2011 in the final exam in high school. You might think I’d had ample time to heal and repair such an ego dent but some things can’t be cured by prayers, only God Himself needs to touch you. The paper was bold and courageous. Like a knight going to battle with a point to prove. Unfortunately, I was the enemy and my castle was about to be crushed. All that overnight cramming was useless. A toddler would have been better off.
I never understood why papers had to come in two’s. Math paper 1, English paper 1, History paper 1 and 2. It must have been a cruel joke from guys with PHDs and high distinctions who competed against each other to see who could come up with the most difficult of questions. So intriguing this was, they had to create two papers like some sort of symbolism that if one fails then the other would come in handy. Unless you happened to be a skinny boy sitting in a big hall with louvers covering the high ceilings, one foot apart from other students all around. His eyes were paired and seeing doubles, the only two he knew.
A lot of irrelevant thoughts cross your mind. You wonder whether the teacher covered this topic and whether you were awake to hear. Then the blame games begin with the focus never being on yourself. But of course, it must have been the teacher. The dean to be exact, who in her role, bit off more than she could chew. Between organizing and supervising the school’s timetable, she forgot she had 4 North to teach. Boys can’t teach themselves, Neither can they multi-task. They can’t take a nap and read at the same time. It goes against all boys’ ethos. And for my former schoolmates who read this and somehow managed to juggle between the two, maybe a gender check should be in order.
I wish at 18, I could tell my younger self that things would be easier. But at 28, you still fail exams and laugh them off. At 38, you hardly remember them because life in itself is a continuous list of questions undone without any marking scheme. At 48, only your experience leads the way, and at 58, you flow with the tide — everything has always seemed to work out.
