Under the Pump...TQA style!

As a student I have had the fortune to be counted amongst the masses of frantic teenagers that seem to pop up all over the world as exam time approaches.  Even more fortunate... I FINISHED my exams yesterday! oh the joy!....nothing else can compare! As a resident of Tasmania the exam format was dictated to us by TQA, a somewhat frustrting organisation who surely spend their lives researching ways to make students lives as miserable as possible. This year they may have reached their goal of ultimate student despair through the English Studies level three exam. The collective tension in the room reached peak height as us students opened our section B exam booklets to fnd that not only was the exam full of average questions but also full of grammatical confusions and contradictions to what we had been told to study for all year! At that point I was ready to weep having just endured, the day before a Maths Applied exam that I definatley failed :(


Of course I picked my self up (metally of course!) and pushed through a torturous two hours of almost certain failiure and left the exam ready to hit someone.

When the wall of  anrgy muttering students (including myself) surged out of our respective rooms we were met with a row of dejected English teachers all clutching exam papers to their chests and looking shattered, we knew for sure that we were not simply being typical grumpy complaining students but that in fact the exam had been worse than normal and we were totally justified in our complaints. One student yelled "do they pay the people that screen those exams?" and I swear on my life that I heard one teacher say under her breath "they should shoot them!"

 Later as I was walking through town to reach a  1 o'clock bus stop, almost two hours later, I saw one of those same dejected teachers shuffling through the mall, exam paper still firmly in his grasp but with the addition of a large coffee, a haunted look in his eyes. Clearly some poeple will be needing therapy this year.

However the aim of this particuler post is not just to complain about TQA (I do enough of that without resorting to posting on the internet!) or to warn year ten students of their impending doom, or to tell teachers they should go see a shrink so that they are able minded enough to cope with another year of teaching. All these things are of course very very relavent what I was going to say orginally is that the matra teachers chant at us through the year "early study makes for a good exam" is actually a pretty smart idea! I do know for a fact that no matter how much study I put in for this particular english exam I still would have been really shocked and un-prepared but maybe I wouldn't have sat there for twenty minutes in shock, maybe I could have reduced that time to ten minutes of shock and subsequently had ten more minutes time to write absolute toss and nonsense in order to look smart.

Studying is hard at the best of times but when it's the end of the year and all there is is you and the looming exams that you wish you could just sprint away from, it's even harder. I know I can find a million things to do before study: washing, cleaning, movies, reading, playing, walking the dog, sleeping, making up exam time jokes:(thanks Ben)

If English Studies really hard, it might pass the exam...

 If Maths Applied, I wouldn't give it the job.

and the massive time killer...FACEBOOK. It's easier to get distracted and as facebook so wisley tells us, the average students has the attitude of: "ten minutes of study, I think I have earned my hour of Facebook" Yes, you may jest but are you really? I thought I was but turns out I am a total facebook junkie in exam time.
so guys it's important that we study, after all this two years is very little time in the sceme of things but these two years also count a huge deal if we want to go to Uni with a good score and re-tain our summers instead of spending them doing bridging programs. Hate to put the 'mum' hat on but you know i'm right ;)

So from my friends that did study sucsessfully this year:
-give your facebook password to a (trusted!) friend so they can change your password over exam time
-get rid of your phone! KILL IT or something...
-go to tutes that are provided
-do things such as go for a walk every couple of hours between study
-drink coffee!
-sleep...lots, but at nightime not at studytime! (I can personally vouch that sleep would have helped me!)

Good Luck x