Onward!!

The exam is tomorrow afternoon. Funnily enough I completely don’t feel like I’m facing my second-to-last-ever exam tomorrow. I’m trying to recall the feeling I had last year facing an exam that I felt I was underprepared for. That went fine, and I remember going to bed the night before pretty much like normal. Tonight seems a little too much like normal for me to think that everything is all right, if that makes any sense. I’m just… not worried. I’ll probably fall asleep quite quickly.

I can’t wait for this to be over. After this fiasco exam I can at least start to revise for a course that had teaching. It’s a pity for a lot of my friends that their LSE careers end on such a bum note, on an exam that a lot hinges on but for stupid institutional mismanagement reasons will result in less-than-expected performance. Or can you say less than expected if it was set for disaster from the start? I still have one more exam, so I’m hoping tomorrow doesn’t sour the taste for me.

Life is weird sometimes.

They’ve sent an email concerning the structure of my core course (that had abysmal teaching, no lecture-seminar coordination and piss-poor readings throughout the year) saying “Oh look here are some new readings on a topic that just might come up on the exam, none of which was on the original reading lists!”

48 hours before the exam.

I’m livid. There’s nothing I can do, there’s no preparation I can genuinely do for a new topic at this sort of late stage. It’s not that I even want to. It just seems like such a complete and utter waste of time. Why would I want to lose sleep over this? Why would I want to stress myself half to death reading up on new and old stuff, trying to make sense of it?

I don’t. I didn’t before and I want to even less now.

This exam can go to hell for all I care.

A non-exhaustive list of physical issues I am experiencing, caused/exacerbated by revision:

• Twitching eyelid. This annoys me because it comes and goes and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Doesn’t stop me from pressing on it with my left hand though. I’ve read it must be because of stress, anxiety, lack of sleep, etc. The usual.
• Aching shoulders and lower back. It just isn’t good for you to sit hunched up reading. Besides, the usual LSE chairs are butt-numbingly bad.
• Weird dreams. I count this as physical because it wakes me up every now and then. Last night it was about Gordon Brown and the tax politics of wind power. You’d think that’d put you to deeper sleep but no.
• Constant hunger. I don’t know if I’m burning off more than I am taking in, but I find myself getting distracted from revision by the feeling of wanting something to eat. That then results in me eating something, which makes me sleepy. Great.
• And yeah, being tired all the time. I do eat as well as I can and try to sleep normal hours, but it’s all just blah.

I can’t wait for all this to be over. I just hope everything returns to normal. Running does help with some of the physical symptoms, which is nice. I’ll keep that up.

It strikes me as a kind of repeating surprise how nice it is to have a radio on in the house. Right now a housemate of mine has Radio 2 on in the kitchen with something suitably cheesy, probably Pet Shop Boys, playing at just the right (low) volume. It’s just… homely.

The existence of final exams during the most beautiful time of the year, when summer is definitely nearly here but still tender and even timid, must have been a cruel joke started by some nutjob. In whose interest is it to keep university students holed up in the library day in and day out, seven days a week, when it would be exactly the time of year when things are looking up otherwise?

The next time spring rolls around, I’ll hopefully have weekends free. At least the weekends.