Exams, a necessary evil. So there you are, in that familiar exam hall having flashbacks to a festive beer campus. For a minute, you wish you could be a first year for ever. Then it’s back to reality: friends asking last minute questions like what was that point they mentioned in week 5. And then the hour of truth arrives: your three hours of torture begin. The ability to concentrate sometimes seems to leave you in the face of frustration. EM presents the top five of these annoying and sometimes concentration-breaking frustrations.
1) I speak English very well, but not so snel maar dat komt nog wel
It naturally begins when the oldies start to announce the start of the exam. So there you are sitting at your desk, pen at the ready, fully concentrated. And then you have to listen to the announcer’s Louis-van-Gaal English. Before he or she has finally finished, you’ve asked yourself ten times why these people never do a language course. Goodbye, concentration.
2) On the tip of your pen
So you’ve finally regained your concentration because luckily you were able to answer the first question easily. But you’re scratching your head at the second question. Firstly, you really have no idea what it’s about, but the longer you stand eye to eye with your enemy, the penny begins to drop. You feel that you know the answer, but you can’t quite get your head around it. However long you think about it, you just can’t seem to get it. The result: frustration levels sky high.
3) On patrol..
You’ve just got into the flow of things, when you suddenly feel a gust of wind from your right. Unsuspecting, you continue writing until you feel another gust of wind from your left. You look up and gaze straight at the unflattering trousers of one of the invigilators. They do seem to love patrolling. And if by chance you find one quietly sitting at their table or calmly standing in the corner of your block, you can bet on being irritated by the loud crunching of crackers. Invigilators, we can’t do without them, but they can be extremely annoying.
4) Clicking syndrome
Although everyone must realise how irritating it is if you constantly click your pen, there are still people who can’t seem to stop. Give them a pen and you know it’s going to end in tears. And if you’re lucky enough not to find anyone suffering from this syndrome, there’s always someone who thinks it’d be a good idea to bite into an apple halfway through question 3. Argh!
5) Boss of my bladder!
You know the situation: you’ve put off asking for that stupid pee pass because you just wanted to write down the answer before you forgot it. The result: someone gets in first. Exasperated, you wait for that person to come back and to fill in time, you start on the next question. When you look up having finished another question, someone else has gone. Boss of my bladder!
