Posts tagged with final.
The last exam
With less than a week left in the school year, there are few students left on campus. Classes officially ended on April 9. After a one-week break, final exams began on April 20. Now each day brings a round of examinations. A new lot of students finished for the year. Small processions of first-years exit dorm rooms with cardboard boxes and potted plants, carried into the trunks of taxis or their parents' cars, back after an 8-month absence.
With most students writing exams, tension on campus was high. Libraries were full. Garbage cans overflowed with sundry coffee cups and foil wrappers. In the study halls, noise was verboten and a ringing cell phone would produce curt comments. Reviewing a semester or two worth of notes makes a person irritable.
Final exams are two or three hours long. They're held across campus, wherever there's space. I'm on my fifth (and last). My first was in a gymnasium. We sat in rows of grey desks, lit by buzzing fluorescent light. People were calm, waiting to begin (though there was one student who looked like he was having a mild panic attack, probably contemplating how much he didn't know and wishing he'd attended more classes).
Once you open the question booklet, there's little else to do but write. Afterwards, when you walk out into the sunshine of a spring afternoon with a hand cramp, it doesn't matter if it went well. It's over and it's on to the next exam or four months of summer. As a way to end 8 months of school that runs the gamut of emotions, it's rather anticlimactic. There's no keg, no party. People just leave.
(Ed. note: Our university 101 section offers tips for high school students on skills they can develop now and, under the "academic" section, info on what kind of exams to expect and tips on exam preparation.)
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end,
exam,
of,
year,
final
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BRYCE WARNES
