A* in Happiness

 As I’m typing these words into my laptop, the life is slowly draining out of me and is bleeding into the plastic buttons of the keyboard where it pools, ready to defuse the modem and make me bang my head against the screen loudly as my whole computer shuts down and I lose all the schoolwork I have ever done – resulting in me being a failure and ending up selling my internal organs on eBay for a living.

The reason behind my despair is that I have just spent roughly four hours staring at the sharp, cool type of a Mathematics Terminal Paper, desperately searching my brains for any inkling of recognition as to what any of the infuriating squiggles might mean. Apparently ‘Σ’ means ‘..the sum of...’. I’m not being funny, but anyone in their right mind will tell you that it’s a Greek E. As in, CRΣTΣ. Have these examiners never had moussaka?

Life is suddenly not looking quite as open and glorious as it once was. When I was three and covered in jam, there seemed to be very little that could ever possibly go wrong, as long as I got the blue cup at dinner time. Now, however, there seem to be lots of things that could go wrong and no amount of blue cups can help matters. For example, I’m sitting my Terminal Mathematics Paper, my M10 Mathematics Paper and my Chemistry 2 Examination all in the next couple of weeks and have already set up my account on eBay in order to get those kidneys rolling. Do you really need two?

Seriously, though: it is easy, I think, to get lost in test papers, to lose sight of what you’re really trying to achieve. It’s easy to get bogged down and depressed with the onslaught of revision and hard work but we will eventually reap the rewards of the hard study we put it. We may be spending a few weeks working really hard, studying for exams, but we can spend the rest of our lives studying for an A* in happiness. After all, you can’t re-take life.

To those of you who have exams coming up: just remember to do your very best. No one can ask any more of you than that. Revision isn’t the most exhilarating activity in the world, but it can be made a lot more bearable by taking regular breaks, working with a buddy, and – most importantly – using coloured highlighters to the max!

Ellen Lavelle