As I write, there are whoops of joy in school corridors throughout the land. And why not? Schools are out for summer, exams are over. Free at last, free at last!
Whose bright idea anyway was it to hold exams in summer? I remember all too well being cooped up in a room while the rest of the world had fun in the sun and drank themselves silly. Those mean adults, I thought, they are taking revenge on the young for being young.
Nowadays the only exams I take are in dreams. Even after all these years I still wake up occasionally in a cold sweat, convinced I am hopelessly unprepared for a life-changing exam.
Listen to my dream and tell me I don’t need therapy. It goes like this: a long line of children file silently through a corridor with white-tiled floors. They head towards a room glowing so fiercely it is impossible to see inside. The only sound is the squeak of shoes and the tick of a clock somewhere.
It is like walking towards gallows.
The light slowly dims to reveal a stony-faced, white-bearded man standing at the end of the room, dressed in a black gown and mortarboard. He probably has horns and a hangman’s noose, although I can’t be sure. There are desks everywhere with sheets of paper.
“Turn over your papers. You have three hours …”
The questions make no sense. Every time I look at the clock another hour has disappeared; and all the while my grinning peers are scratching away in a triumphant frenzy of knowledge. Five minutes left and nothing on my paper.
Even when I awake it takes a while to comprehend it was just a dream.
Creepy isn’t it? Although stakes are highest for college exams, I found other tests just as nerve-wracking. Take the 100 words-a-minute shorthand test.
No matter how many times I rehearsed with tapes, practising at ridiculous speeds until my fingers ached, my efforts were sabotaged by sweaty palms. Not even half way through the test, the paper would resemble a damp rag, the ink running until the outlines became nigh indecipherable.
To make matters worse, the further behind I fell, the bigger the outlines and, therefore, the slower I wrote. And the more my fingers trembled. It was a conspiracy of sorts. Why God, why? I would ask.
“I need one of those gland operations,” I wailed at my instructress. “Otherwise I will never pass. I have sweaty palm disease.”
And then there was my first British driving test. Oh Lordy! Another occasion of SPD, compounded by TFD (trembling fingers disease) and a touch of TLD (trembling lip disease).
I had a terrible feeling at the first sight of Mr. B in his shabby black suit. There was a 9 a.m. irritability about him that spelled FAILURE in giant letters to my sleep-filled teenage eyes. My attempts at nervous jollity, my inane and desperate grinning, only worsened his mood.
Carrying his clipboard and sourness, he marched me to my car, pausing to ask me to read a number plate. Then he sat in the car, leaning forward as if I had already braked too hard.
Throughout the test he kept one hand on the dashboard, removing it only to jot something on his pad. It was a traumatic experience, unaided by my comprehensive ignorance of the Highway Code. Failure was relief.
Thereafter, I became convinced driving examiners took sadistic pleasure in ratcheting up tension during tests. When I did pass, it was despite sweaty palms and trembling fingers.
“I’m going to pass you,” the examiner said. “But Christ, you were more nervous than me on my first date.”
I left the car feeling like a one-legged man who had just grown another limb. As harrowing as it was, however, the driving test has never haunted me like those college exams.
So many years later and the nightmares persist. Is there a psychiatrist in the house?
