Deadlines are coming up real fast, and I am getting nostalgic about something that doesn’t have the proper distance in time to deserve being called a nostalgia, since I am right in the process, or actually not even started. Yes it is the exam, the nerve-wrecking, yet exhilarating time of the year when all you knowledge in one micro(yet strangely feeling very macro at the time)subject is being put to the test. How do you organise it, structure you paper or oral exam, how do you keep cool, calm and collected. I personally can first be structured and organised when I have enough little time to spur me on, but not too much time to make me lazy. Don’t get me wrong, I like simmering a topic for months and months on end, but it’s all in my head and doing all sorts of quirky shortcuts and elaborations before I get it on paper and finish it.

This year I am taking two courses, one on Strategic Communication and one on Modern Chinese Literature. And the strangest thing about it; I can’t agree with people who are almost ready to take over the university and declare exams as a thing of the past. The university, like many other workplaces, expect to see some results from the investments they put in the semester, and I do believe that you become a more diverse thinker in the process. I am however not always in agreement with the end result being the most important, on the contrary – the best thing about the exam is the process, the way you tackle the time, the effort you put into it, and the other events and people who inevitably demand your time as well. There is always the risk, for instance at an oral exam, that the nerves get the best of you and all the hard work you have put into it goes out the window. There is also always some numskull who hasn’t followed one single class, or done anything other than intensify coffee consumption at lectures, who walks away, acing the whole lot every single time, while you scramble notes, thoughts and work in a puree of meltdownish actions of panic.

Anyways, to get back to my exams – I am psyched. I got ideas (too many of them), time, place, creativity, I am on the top of the motherblipping game. I brainstorm, scribble, read, feel the university saga of academia running through my veins, I am Student!! I guess it is the hope of hitting the mother of all exams, the one where nothing is left unsaid, no stone unturned, no question unanswered. Expectations are high, but so are standards. I stand with great anticipation at the doorstep of another great challenge in academia.

Wish me luck…