Stop writing, Time's up!!!

By now most readers would fervently hope (deriving conclusions from the title) that I put an end to this inane blog but I am gonna subject you to this torture for a few more years till I hang up my boots :-) Or if by a sudden twist of fate, I am stranded in an island without Internet! Then I'll be busy building sand-castles. Ok, back to the title. If you aren't a student anymore , then it would seem vague. Remember examination halls ? Supervisor ? A mental picture of you scribbling away the last few sentences / lines ? And then the dreaded " Stop writing ", " Hand over your papers now " , " Time's Up" !!

When I had exams, my entire house had exams. Period. I was the agitated, snappy, jumpy person during March-April every year. I had the jitters the morning of the exam and would drive everyone nuts. If something didn't go according to schedule, I'd be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. This would be after 2-3 revisions mind you. I was not a regular topper or such but I was a quintessential nerd. I feel bad for my parents ; they had the very definition of a problem child in me! Till my 12th, this was how every test/exam came and went. Once I joined my Engineering, the regular occurence of tests & exams mellowed me to a large extent. I slowly became nonplussed and nonchalant about exams and managed to do well even with my lackadaisical attitude. Throughout school, probably the only subjects I disliked were biology & sanskrit because I was horrible at both. We had Computer Science ( the prog. language 'C' ) as a subject in my first semester. Trust me, I even liked the most-hated subjects, Mechanical, Chemistry, Strength of Materials(SoM) etc but not C. I hated programming!!

When the first set of tests started, I was least prepared for C. On the day of the test, I thought otherwise. There were 4-5 simple questions and I pored over them for the whole 1 hour. The moment I stepped out of the classroom, my friend asked me what was the output I deduced for a certain program. I was stumped since I had not even seen that in the paper. It was one of those "Oh-No" moments in my life. I'd forgotten to turn over the paper & answer the remaining 2 questions :-( I threw my bag & ran inside to plead for a few more minutes. He refused & exclaimed that it was tantamount to cheating!! Well, I ended up with a 12 on 25 (or something like that). The second test was no better. I turned the paper on all sides and wrote all I could but didn't manage anything out of the ordinary to make up for the abysmal first performance. For the third & final test, the entire class pleaded with Prof to set an easy paper. It looked like everyone had goofed up the second one so I had some company there atleast! Our prof relented, showed some mercy & gave us a list of probable programs. Copying was never an option for me but memorizing was. To most girls, learning by-rote comes naturally. Don't ask me why. Its a God-given talent I think. I never 'mugged' usually but when the need of the hour is a good score, one mustn't question too much. I practised so hard I knew every program down to the last semi-colon and hash includes!! Our prof was quite a miserable creature teacher so it never even occured to me to figure out the logic behind each program on my own & learn the syntax (the easier option for the sensible ones). Thus armed, I was charged for the third test. I think I was just a tad extra-charged! You'll see what I mean. I finished the paper very quickly , handed it over & was super pleased I managed to salvage the situation just in time. Until the day of reckoning arrived. Everyone's 'blue book' (as it was called) was at my prof's desk save for mine. He called me aside & gave me an incredulous look as he handed me my bluebook. For a minute I thought it was perhaps because my programs seemed too good to be written by me. It wasn't so. I had very smartly written the program for binary search instead of bubble sort (which was what was asked). Ooops!! This is what happens when you learn by-rote & overlook important details like reading the entire question! Since there were no more tests to redeem myself, my prof gave me full marks for my program. Not before he questioned me for 30 minutes to make sure I knew the difference in the logic for both the programs (thankfully I was able to explain that)!!

After this, I never had another programming language till my 5th semester. This time it was C++. It was taught by my HoD (head of the dept) who managed to stir my curiosity. I learnt OOP concepts the right way and finally wrote all the programs on my own. Have to add it helped tremendously even later. I don't think anyone I know liked taking exams as much as I did. If I had my way, I'd be studying all my life. I used to enjoy the preparation phase so much. I would make elaborate time-tables and would get them approved by my mom who was certain I was out of my mind;-) I once wrote 2 tests on my birthday - Control Systems & Micro-processors. I managed to do both extremely well so I was ecstatic I had the 'birthday good luck'! However, in my final year the MBA entrance exam , CAT(common aptitude test) was also held on my birthday. More than all the preparation, I think I again banked on my good ol' birthday luck to bail me out. The joke was on me this time. I went in beaming only to come out nearly sobbing. Whether it was because the exam or birthday was ruined is an open question even now! Although when the results came out, it turned out I didn't do as bad as I'd imagined. But you know for CAT - if you don't score a 99+ percentile, it is as good as flunking !!

Funny how I have changed over the years. I have an exam (not a life-altering one) in less than a week and 3 books to study from. I have so far managed 60 pages from book 1 and I'm happily blogging about my pathetic situation. Books 2 & 3 might just remain untouched! No time-tables made at all. No question of revision here. But the excitement of giving an exam after so many months is undiminished. I shall ensure I read every question twice & turn the question paper twice-over (yup it isn't online).

**wish me luck :) there's little doubt I'm gonna need it with my history of bloopers!