Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Stressed - Who Me?

Ours can’t be the only household at the moment swamped by a high volume of stress pheromones.

It’s exam time. There isn’t a clear surface anywhere in the house – everything is covered with note paper, writing material, text books. The poor teenager sits with her nose to the grindstone, morning, noon and night.

I tell her she is doing too much, she argues she is not doing enough. Revision has become competitive.  First thing in the morning she learns from Facebook that her friend Fred has been in the college library since seven o’clock. He was there until closing time last night. He will get A*’s, she will only get A’s…

Things have changed a lot since my day. Back in the 1980’s I undertook one of those new-fangled modular style courses at the local Technical College.  I accrued passes, and apart from a Business Studies A Level which I took alongside RSA typing and shorthand (yes – it really was that long ago) I didn’t have to sit two hour long hand-written exams, regurgitating a whole load of facts and figures.  I wasn’t going on to university – my life didn’t depend whether I passed or failed, whether I got that all important A* or just a sad old E, which I did, for my Business Studies. By the time I left college I already had a job lined up. Those were the days.

Naturally I try and sympathise. Of course it’s tough, I know it’s important, but it really isn’t the be all and end all.  Exams can be re-sat, careers – and universities - can be and do get changed. What you want at 18 is not always what you want at 21, or 30.

I know the teenager will do her best. I tell her to breathe, take a break.  Brains reach saturation point. There is only so much knowledge that can be consumed at any one time.  Obviously I don't understand at all.

Our whole lives are now on hold for the next couple of weeks.  We are walking on egg-shells, tip-toeing around piles of papers. I provide food and drink upon demand, I am on standby for the emergency dash to the train station.  I have read essays, listened to the re-counting of philosophical and psychological practices, recitations of quotations. I will be there in that exam room with her and I too am stressed beyond belief....

Soon it will all be over and the teenager won't be the only one hitting the vodka and heaving a huge sigh of relief.




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