Tasha Dhanraj gets through her mock exams

I have just finished the single most stressful week of my life. In preparation for my exams in May, the International Baccalaureate teachers at my college arranged a week of mocks. I had two sessions a day for five days. The word session was obviously used to make it sound like something pleasant and relaxing, like a massage session, or a swimming session, or a session with a therapist. You never use the word ‘session’ to describe an appointment with a dentist.

Often, these sessions would last two and a half hours, meaning I had five hours of exams a day. Some nights I didn’t come home until 6pm, and then would need to immediately start revising for the next one. Of course, that didn’t actually happen. First I would spend an hour ‘relaxing’ (which meant screaming into a pillow,) then eat dinner, and tessellate all of my pens before looking down at my books and fantasising about burning them. I would try to get to bed at around 10pm, but I would stay awake fretting until 3am.

“You never use the word ‘session’; to describe an appointment with a dentist”

I think I have done exceptionally badly in about half of the exams. The subject I suspect I have done worst in is Biology, which is frustrating because that is the only one I actually managed to make myself revise for. My Biology teacher is (to quote my friend Harriett) a total babe, in that he is a delightfully sweet old man and his disappointed face makes me feel like I have accidentally kicked a kitten in the face.

The purpose of these exams is to make us realise how much more revision we have to do between now and May. I already knew I didn’t
know anything! According to Socrates, that would make me the wisest man
in Athens.

All my teachers have achieved is to make me realise how rubbish I am at dealing with stress. The moment that really sealed the deal of what a pathetic drip I am was when I spent half an hour crying in the toilet. Crying in a public toilet is surprisingly difficult. The toilet paper made it impossible to work out whether my tears were tears of stress or tears of pain from the crinkly tissue I was rubbing into my eyes.

These exams have transformed me into a tetchy, nervous wreck. The floodgates of stress have been opened. Now, I have five months of emotional turmoil to deal with…