In my final semester, there was this exam that almost broke me (critics will say the exam broke me even). This exam was undoubtedly the toughest exam of my undergraduate degree. This was not because the exam was the hardest exam (the exam was difficult but I don't think it was the hardest) I had ever taken or because I prepared the least for this exam (I started preparing like 24 hours before like I did for most of my exams in that year and semester so that wasn't the case).
Here's what happened. It was a cold morning at around 8 a.m., we had this exam, BFN 425 - Quantitative Analysis for Financial Decision. For most of the semester, I was totally clueless as to what was going on in the class. We didn't write any structured test so I never really had a reason to study the course before the exam. The 1st and 2nd tests were classwork and assignment
That morning, I was walking into the exam with less than 24 hours of study time and a few hours of tutorial time that one of the course lecturers did with us. I walked into the exam like 10 minutes after the exam started because the lecturer decided to delay us cos we were busy revising outside instead of walking inside when he told us to do so as is the custom of most students taking exams. 😅When I eventually entered the class, I was assigned to sit at the last seat in my column (which isn't really a problem cos I can sit anywhere to do the exam).
A few minutes into the exam, I had started writing, solving question 1 which touched on the area that was covered in the tutorial. I arrived for the tutorial a bit late so I missed out on a seemingly unimportant detail which I thought I figured out. Halfway through solving question one, I knew my answer was wrong because I got stuck somewhere and if you did everything right, you aren't supposed to get stuck. After looking through, I couldn't find what the problem was so I decided to move on to question two. You know how they always advise, that if you are stuck on one question, don't spend all the time there, move on to the next question and come back to that. Yea, I did that.
Question two was related to the ONLY class all semester that I actually knew what was going on and understood what was done so I was pretty confident in my ability there. I started solving. Halfway through, I knew my answer was wrong again because I got stuck AGAIN! 😭😭😭 Ok, now shit started going sideways. I looked through everything and AGAIN I could not find the problem!
While this was going on, the invigilator came to shout "1 hour 30 minutes more". Wait WHAT!!! 😭😭 It was a 3-hour exam, so you mean to tell me I had spent half the time and I had not even finished 1 question out of the 4 I was supposed to answer? Lord Jesus, I have only ever gotten 1 C in my undergraduate degree, it's not in final year final semester that I will now fail na 😭
I immediately called the invigilator and asked for a new exam booklet so I could start all over. Maybe, if I started all over with extra care, I would figure out where it all went wrong and eventually do the right thing. So I did.
While I was waiting for the invigilator to go get the new answer booklet from the front, it felt like an eternity, it felt like the guy was using a whole 30 minutes out of the 1 hour 30 minutes I had left to write the exam to go to the front to get me this paper. Couldn't he see the urgency? Didn't he understand what was at stake here? Why was he intentionally trying to punish me? Or have my village people finally arisen to ruin my life at this crucial time in my degree?
An eternity later, he was finally back. Ok, let's start again. Off I went, trying to write again from the top. I started the number one question again and I encountered another problem, this problem was even worse than the first one I did, at least in the first one I had gone far a bit before the problem arose, this one, I saw the problem in an earlier stage than before. 😭😭 God, what is it na? Who did I offend? Again I moved on to number 2. This time the invigilator came to shout "1 hour 15 minutes left". Blood of the woman with the issue of blood!
I tried again and encountered the same problem with number 2. I was clearly flustered. My brain wasn't at it's best. It was raining heavily outside but I was sweating profusely. Lord, this cannot be how I will get an extra year na. The only difference was, this time when I looked over the thing, I figured out the problem with the number 2 and I knew I was on my way to the right answer but as I continued, I made another mistake that made my answer wrong again.
This time, I just moved on to number 3. I finally finished that one and all looked fairly well there. Only that number 3 had a theory part that I could not remember again because I had already overworked my brain trying to remember 1 and 2 and the number 3 theory wasn't something I knew so well so, I just freestyled that question. Las las I will get 1 over 5. 😭😢😓
Ok, off to number 4 which should be something I sorta knew but when I finally did it, I realized I didn't know it. At this point, it became clear that my first attempt was a lot neater and had more potential.
So I called the same invigilator again to ask for my old answer booklet back. He clearly saw how discombobulated I was so he tried to calm me down first before he took another eternity to walk to the front and get my first answer sheet back. In my mind I was shouting "sir there's no time for this, get me my answer sheet, THERE'S NO TIME" but outside I was nodding quietly as he told me to "calm down, settle down, are you sure you want to start there again?".
One eternity later, I was back to my first answer sheet and I quickly went to number 2 and remedied the error. This time, I finally finished the question and the answer was RIGHT! 💃💃💃 My first 17.5 marks in the bag. I moved on to number 3, did the freestyling and whatever. Las las, I could get 10 out of 17.5 there. I had sure 27.5 marks out of 70 now. This silly invigilator that was always coming to shout time hadn't come in a while so I just had to rush to try to do the other questions.
While this was going on, a good number of my colleagues had started submitting. Meanwhile, I was just struggling to do number 4. I did the other number 4 I did in the previous booklet that didn't make any sense and just tried to get some tidying done before the invigilator comes to shout "time up". To my surprise, he came to announce "1 hour left". I was like WAIT WHAT?! There's no way all that happened in 15 minutes then it became clear that maybe in my confusion, I misheard and maybe he actually said: "you have used 1 hour 15 minutes" which meant we had 1 hour 45 minutes left or he just misyarned. In either case, I had time to figure out number 1 and to try and figure out a different question out the "6 questions, answer 4" to make my number 4.
I found this other part that I didn't really know what the lecturer wrote in the note or at least I didn't see anything like that in the lecture slide but I figured I could freestyle the question using my general knowledge so I did just that. I freestyled a whole question that had a,b and c for a lecturer that I was sure was either crazy or just had a very strict definition of what was right and was very unaccommodating to freestylers like me. 😅😆
At least, the freestyle made more sense than the previous number 4 that I had so I canceled that one and went with that selection. I tried to look at my number 1 again but I still couldn't find the problem. To my mind, I did everything right in the way I understood it so I just went through my other answers and submitted.
After everything, I went outside and talked with my other colleagues and realized that the first part of the tutorial that I missed for coming late was the missing piece that made my entire number 1 wrong from the first line 😱😰😵. What about number 2? That was cool. Number 3? Apparently, I made a mistake with one calculation and used the wrong formula for something which made one part of it wrong. The number 4? total freestyling so only God can talk about that one.
At the end of that exam, it became clear that the only way I would even pass would be by the grace of God. To be honest, after the exam I considered going to drop the course on my portal and just come again next year because it would be better for my CGPA for me to come and try again next year than for me to get an F. After much thought, I decided against it 😪.
But one thing was clear, initially, when I think of this event, I regret taking the second answer booklet. My moral lesson was: maybe sometimes don't start all over. Maybe sometimes, you have to stick with the mess you've made and follow through to the end and maybe eventually, you would see where it all went wrong.
But now that I think of everything that happened, every single part of the story seems important to the end result. If I didn't get the new paper, I wouldn't have seen where I made the mistake with the second question. I probably would have spent the whole exam wondering.
So maybe sometimes, you need to take a step back to see the whole picture and then figure out the right way to solve a problem and some other times, taking a step back actually makes you mess up the situation all the more.
I guess the message would be that every single ugly insignificant piece is essential to solving the massive jigsaw puzzle that is called life. Sometimes, the answer to the question you might be asking might lead you to another question that would further complicate your life. Giving up may not be the best choice and sometimes giving up may help you figure out exactly what went wrong.
Nonetheless, at the end of it all, I finally saw what I got in that exam. Guess what I got? 80% overall. 😂😂😂 Which meant I scored 57 in the exam because I got 23 in the tests. 😂Isn't God just good? 😂 The one exam I was so scared of failing was the one I got one of my highest in. 😂 Proving once again that this life is a pot of beans; very unpredictable and still finds a way to comically teach lessons.
Let me know what lessons you got from this piece in the comment section.
Comments
Compliments of the season. Yours Jemimah!