Exams

It’s been a long time since I last posted any “life stuff”, because in this time I’ve been slowly going insane, then trying to regain my sanity by stupidly filling my days with as much stuff as possible. Now I’m finally getting some down time, so it’s high time I updated anyone that may be reading this with where my life’s at right now. I’ve got quite a lot to talk about, so I’ll probably split this up over a few posts.

Sooooo let’s start with exams.

Finishing revision and getting through all my exams was such a struggle. There were many times when I thought I wouldn’t make it to the end because I was feeling so miserable (I don’t know if I was depressed – I doubt it, because I’m feeling much better now – but it was definitely the lowest I’ve ever felt in my life and it felt like I would never be happy again). I even had my first ever argument with Steve because I just couldn’t take it any more : (. Having to get up every morning and sit and read and read and read until it was bedtime was really not good for me. Plus I really messed up my revision “strategy” (if one ever existed...) – I spent far too much time revising for my first exam (Marine Vertebrate Conservation, in which I got my worst ever mark for an assignment, so I felt like I needed to try hardest for the exam in that module in order to pull my grade up), and that meant I neglected the other 3 and did nowhere near as much work as I should have.

Each of my exams this year was 2 hours long (twice as long as all of my other uni exams). I had to answer 2 questions in each, each question being one essay. I had 4 exams for the 4 modules I did this year – Marine Vertebrate Conservation, Animal Life-History Diversity and Conservation, Africa Field Course, and Wildlife Forensics.

My first exam, Marine Vertebrate Conservation, went pretty well – when I opened the exam paper I instantly had stuff to write about, I managed to get in my evidenced of outside reading, and I even managed to cite a couple of scientific papers (which I’ve never been able to do in an exam before). I came out of that one feeling pretty confident, but slightly panicked that I only had a week to revise for another 2 whole exams...

My second exam, Animal Life-History Diversity and Conservation, was quite possibly the worst exam I’ve ever done. I opened the paper and went completely blank. I had a choice of 4 questions, 2 of which I ruled out straight pretty much straight away as I had nothing to say for either of them. I managed to think of a few points to include for the other 2, but my answers completely lacked structure, I missed out loads of key things, and I had no outside reading examples. I could see the marks disappearing before my eyes :(

The third exam, the day after the last one, was for my trip to South Africa. It went a lot better than the second exam, but it still wasn’t brilliant – I ended up having to make up basically everything in my second question and try to give it some semblance of truth. But I knew it couldn’t be as awful as the previous one, so I wasn’t too worried.

Between this and my next exam, basically everyone else I know had finished their exams – Steve had finished, my housemates had finished, and even other people on my course who didn’t do that module were finished. This made me really, really grumpy, and all I wanted to do was hide in my room and not talk to anyone until it was all over haha.

The last exam, a week after the previous one, was Wildlife Forensics. I don’t think I really had that much to write, but by that point I simply didn’t care and all I could focus on was the fact that 2 hours after opening the paper it would all be over and I would never have to revise again, hurrah! This made it extremely difficult to concentrate on the exam itself, so much so that I finished writing 20 minutes before the end (which never, ever happens), but again I simply didn’t care because freedom was within my reach. The end of exams was a lot less dramatic than I thought it would be.

As everyone else had finished days before the novelty had worn off for them, so I had no one to properly celebrate with. I went to The Stannary (our on-campus bar) and had a celebratory jug of Pimms and a Kinder Egg (because I’m secretly still a child haha), then went home and felt far too drained and exhausted to do anything else. Steve and I went out and had a tasty dinner at the Mexican restaurant down the road, but that was about all I could manage that evening before I just needed to sleep (plus the fact that I’m not a “party animal” so Club I was not an attractive prospect haha).

And so, what were quite possibly the longest and most boring months of my life were over, and all I needed to do was wait 3 weeks to find out whether it had all been worth it...