Ginger & Cardamom

I have reached way past my student life (way as in read 2 years) but the student life leaves such highlights on you that they are imbibed on our minds. Examinations are one such phenomenon that they can generate extreme ends of feelings in a human being. I thought that I would write this post on LES but I got a midway riff of my old time memories. So here I convey the emotions I felt during different examinations in the entire span of life-

1- Joy- When you get your examination paper, and you find out it is the same version for which you paid the clerk last night. The feeling first smile on your face yes that’s what you call Joy.

2- Disgust- When you sit for an examination for engineering entrance and you get question for a 8^th Grader. (It happened to me when I gave the University Engineering college Entrance Exam). The feeling you want me to answer Kiddo questions, I want to be an engineer dude. That’s Disgusting isn’t it?

3- Acceptance- When you know you are anyways going to Flunk the examinations and stop trying.

4- Fear- When you never studied Accounts or Fin-101 or Electrical Machines & Measuring Instruments, the damn subjects are so drag that you feel sleepy deciding that you will study in the morning. Only to find you woke up 15 mins before the examination starts.

5- Surprise- When you open the question paper, only to find that you were reading the Theory of Automata whole day yesterday and they by mistake gave you the paper of Discrete Mathematics

6- Sadness- Well by default Exams are a sad phenomenon until you are Monica Geller.

7- Anger- When you realize the question paper you paid for yesterday night was Fluid Mechanics for 4^th Semester Civil Engg. and you are supposed to appear for Engg. Mechanics 2^nd Semester. Damn would have been better if you knew what subjects you were opting for.

8- Anticipation- When the papers like Theory of Automata, Compiler Design, Macro-Economics, Accounts are on the Exam list. The shivering you get is often out of anticipation

9- Empathy- When your Juniors in engineering college flunk the same subject you did and tell you how the entire paper was out of course. At that point of time what shows on your face is empathy

10- Worry- When you realize that you have to give exams this semester, and it would have been a lot better if you wouldn’t have just relied on proxies the entire semester

11- Regret- The feeling when you stand outside the dean’s office explaining why you couldn’t maintain 75% 60% 50% even 15% attendance in the class. The odds are 6 to 4 that he would give you the hall ticket to sit in the examination.

12- Curiosity- When you don’t know a thing asked in the question paper, and the person sitting front/back/ left/right/diagonally to you is writing profoundly as if he has to finish the legend of Mhabharata faster than Ved Vyas could have recited it. The feeling right inside you which makes you lean forward and sneak into his notebook is called Curiosity. No I don’t call it cheating; Curiosity is human instinct right?

13- Desire- When you write on small chits of paper on your hands covered inside full shirts, at the back of calculators and rulers and pencil box and even admit card and its envelope. That’s what is the desire to succeed.

14- Envy- The little emotion you get when the most seriously studying girl (yeah its always a girl who would complete all her homework in time, do all assignments, read two chapters in advance from 5 different books, She’s always a girl) would tell which question was from which book, on what page and how many times she had done it prior to the exams.

15- Pressure- When you step out of your hostel room in the night before going to sleep, to find lights in all the rooms are on. You come back switch on your table lamp and then go to sleep.

That’s all about the Emotions and Exams. To come back to LES as I had already promised Reema, who is having her last exam tomorrow, that I will write about it on my blog today. I had a term defined especially for an occurrence in behavior prior to the last Exam. I like to call it as Last Exam Syndrome (LES). LES as I called it, is the euphoria because of the realization that you are going to be the free bird after the next exam. The joy of anticipation is so unparalleled that you actually start enjoying and feeling relaxed and happy. As a matter of fact you don’t even feel the same emotions when exams actually do get over, that would match the happiness quotient of time between the second last and last exams. So Reema enjoy your LES and Best of Luck for your exams tomorrow.