I really haven’t been avoiding you.  Finding myself in exam conditions, after three decades, was fairly daunting.  If I had listened to my body language better I would have known that it was screaming when I made my way to the venue, two hours early. 

 The exam took place in the middle of London.  When I arrived it was locked up tight and nobody was permitted entry, until 30 minutes prior.  Then we got herded into the hall, scanned and strip-searched – just kidding.  We were allowed one Ziploc with ID, assortment of pens and no mobile phones.  You put your baggie on your desk and your absolutely “non-nickables” into another bag and under your chair.  While the disembodied voice of an invigilator droned on, I put my ID number on all the green books and began to sweat.  That was when the dehumanizing sense of powerlessness hit me.  I had no idea of what I was going to be asked, really; no idea of what they wanted, really and a sinking feeling that I was about to blow a few thousand quid.  I sweat, in all that not knowing.

 
By the time we were allowed to turn over our papers I had an overwhelming sense that I was sitting in a movie set for a version of the original Macintosh commercial from 1984.  Except for the shaved heads and the uniforms, the situation was eerily reminiscent.  I kept hoping that "the blonde" in the red shorts was going to make an appearance and release me from the throes of the mind police.   But she never showed and the loudspeaker crackled to life with a “TURN OVER YOUR PAPERS!”  Possibly four of the most dreaded words in any student, let alone a mature ones’, vocabulary.

 I immediately lost all sense of perspective.  There were eight questions and I had three hours to answer three of them.  I sped read the lot and forgetting everything one might refer to as exam technique, I started on number one.  This was not because I felt I could answer it but simply because it was number 1.  Big mistake. I had no outline, no plan, just fever pitched prose. I got about two pages into my first green book and realized I had run out of brain.  This is very disturbing. I proceeded to write anything I had attempted to commit to memory and kept writing while my brain underwent “atrophication”, which I will admit is not even a word.  Anyone who had the misfortune to read what I eventually produced will swear that this paper could not have been the work of a native English speaker.  I even tried to re-read a few sections, by then convinced that I must have suffered a small stroke and had destroyed any English speaking lobes.  Since English is my first, and only language this was a problem but I persevered.  My pen never stopped.  For the first time ever, I was glad to only be a number.

 
Somehow, I emerged from the cavernous hall rather lighter.  I managed to park the fact that those three hours represented 75% of my grade.  I placed this thought in the only non-atrophied piece of my brain and went out for beers with my fellow students, prepared to drown any remaining cells.

 
And I just got the news.  The mature student PASSED.  First compulsory module - check!

-- Deborah Gale

www.expatriateliving.com

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