Durham’s Palace Green Library: pretend you’ve been inside.
The Term of Terror, as I like to call it, is now well advanced. The exams are looming, the cold sweats have begun and it’s unlikely that you’ll be hearing about anything else for the next couple of weeks. In order to get through this stressful time without triggering the premature ageing process, you need to be aware of some facts.
Firstly, you may find that this is the term when you discover how truly deep your friends’ talents for deception run. You will begin to become aware of it during your first group revision session in the Library. For a start, your friends will actually know where the Library is.
You can avoid embarrassment at this stage by staying at the back of the group and closely shadowing their movements, while exuding an air of familiarity with the building. Do this by waving cheerily at the librarians and pointing at people whilst exclaiming loudly, “God, they’re always in here!”
“Okay,” you’re thinking, “so my friends have been to the Library before, but I’m sure it was an entirely innocent mistake.” That, however, is where you’re wrong. For you will now see something that will sicken you to the core – the sight of your friends producing files entirely devoted to revision, along with neat little index cards, colour coded to aid their long-hidden desires to achieve a first. This is when you realise that you hardly know these people who, whilst you got on down on the dancefloor, were secretly getting jiggy with mnemonics. Don’t worry. Remember they have NOT turned into geeks. This extreme anal retentiveness is just a sign of their inward fear.
Whilst you may be sat in a kind of panic-induced rigor mortis, caught rabbit-like in the glare of the harsh overhead lighting, they will be regretting having wasted valuable weeks colouring in their revision timetables and will be awestruck by the apparent genius exuded by the brevity of your notes. “Here is someone,” they will be thinking, “who is in the final stages of exam preparation and is far too superior in intelligence to own coloured pencils.”
They may become Library-bound for the interim but this is only due to the fact that their fear-induced sweating has created a suction effect between themselves and their chair. Make use of their immobility and offer to go on sandwich runs. This will get you out of the Library, imparting an air of confidence about your preparations.
With the revision period nicely covered you will now be able to move into the exam period proper. You haven’t worked, you haven’t a hope in hell of passing, and you’re about to disappear into the vacuum that is life as a cashier at KwikSave. But whatever you do, don’t make this apparent to anyone around you. Instead, spend the day before your first exam trawling through the stationery shops buying up every available biro, ballpoint and pencil. Not only will this throw everyone else into a panic when they realise that their chances of success are seriously hindered by not having anything to write with, it will also lend you an air of professionalism. You will arrive at the exam fully prepared for any stationery-related emergency.
Remember also to bring with you several litres of Lucozade, packets of energy tablets and at least three bananas. People will look at you and realise that whilst they thought that this was only an exam, you instinctively knew that it was a fight to the death, in which only the fittest survive.
During the exam try your best to irritate as many people as possible. Make frequent toilet trips, glug noisily on your Lucozade, tap loudly on your desk and, if possible, develop some sort of full body twitch. By distracting others you are likely to bring their grades down too, thus making your miserable mark look marginally better when placed in the context of such exalted company.
When the exams have finished, spend the remaining weeks of term in an alcoholic haze. This will keep your mind off your impending failure. And when the results finally appear remember, above all, to remain completely aloof. People will naturally assume you’ve got a first and will desist from questioning you. If you follow my advice to the letter you will find that the exams pass by painlessly. If you have any questions about my proposed scheme then please don’t hesitate to contact me. I can’t promise to answer all of your queries. I’ll be too busy revising.
Georgina Turnbull is a second-year English and Philosophy student at the College of St Hild and St Bede, Durham University.
This article was first published in Palatinate, Durham’s student newspaper, in May 2001. Reproduced here by kind permission of the publishers
