Londonward

Unprepared does not begin to describe the feeling I have regarding me and this year’s final exam. It’s not like I don’t know the stuff but if yesterday’s fiasco in my previous exam is anything to go by a slight uncertainty can precipitate into catastrophic confusion and mangled language for the first half of the exam.

If the questions are good, I’ll be fine. If they aren’t, well… I’ll be glad to pass. If I can use my knowledge from other courses as well as general common sense, I’ll be golden. If the questions ask for specific examples I haven’t revised, I’m in a world of hurt.

It all looms in 1.5 hours. With luck I’ll be out of there in 3 hours after that, with some sort of smile on my face.

I was filling the school printers this morning for some extra cash. I had left a box of paper under a printer table and was filling the adjacent printer’s trays when a lady knelt to the box I had left and started ripping open a ream of paper. I walked over to her and said that if she could hang on I’d come around in a minute and fill all the printers. Mademoiselle de France took some 50 sheets from the ream she had opened, straightened her skirt and said “I just want some paper…”
I replied, “This paper is for printing… it’s not suppsoed to be used for anything else.”
She retorts with “mais… with ze money I am paying for ze course… I just need some paper, bon?”

I didn’t think of anything clever to say at the time, but am cursing my belated realisations now.

I could have said, “yeah, I pay the same exorbitant fees and don’t steal paper.” Or, I could have said, “the reason the fees are high is because of people like you.” But, of course, I didn’t think of them there.

In the midst of exam stress I have been convinced to part with £225 of money I don’t yet possess (thank you, Visa!) in order to spend a week in hopefully sunny Southern Norway at Hovefestivalen.

As if that isn’t planet-destroying enough, I’m also flying back to Helsinki at the end of the week, meaning 2 exams in 24 hours, hopefully a drink or several and a flight to catch early in the morning in order to make it to my brother’s graduation. Woohoo.

Just because the sun is up at 5:25 doesn’t make it right for the International Relations Order vs. Justice debate people to start a conversation in my head and make me realize a bunch of the mistakes I made in yesterday’s exam. Oh well, at least it’s done. I got exactly the questions I wanted but not formulated in the best possible way. It’s also strange how you forget details, names and arguments as the exam jitters set in. At the start of each question I had an idea of what I was writing, but inevitably the halfway point meant that I felt I had said everything I wanted to.

I’ll just have to wait and see.