Within 4 walls

Gone are love and teddy bears, fire places and fuzzy feelings-- they have all been smothered by the stress of EXAMS. The humongous thing that looms in the very near future, bearing it's teeth down upon us all. I've never liked exams (I guess nobody does), but I dislike them especially because they drive me crazy. Because I feel it judges me in the severest senses of the word. It brands me with either a stamp of approval or disapproval that I carry along with me for the rest of my life, oftentime manifesting itself in a niggling voice at the back of my mind-- "only 60 on that test? Oh no good, you're gonna fail the next one". Although when I sit back and think about it really, it isn't the 60 that determines my fate the next round, it is that defeatist thinking I sometimes harbour that is the culprit and that I must try to eradicate.

Somedays I wonder why we have to have exams. It draws my focus away from learning what is useful to me in the future and narrows my perspective to just coping with the immediate needs-- exam technique, what pleases examiners, how to "tikam" MCQ questions. And I just find that so draining, because it hardly adds value to my life or my work in the future. I love what I do, there never is a shadow of doubt about that, there's hardly anything that makes me happier in the world than caring for the many defenceless souls one encounters on the job and because of that I love to learn, because it will help me help patients in the future but also because of the great pleasure learning gives. And exams just take that all away, you know, takes away the sanctity and joy of learning and taints it with fear, ego, desperation, frustration, perfectionism. But I guess we can't have things our way always. Sheer pragmaticism in me knows exams are a quintessential part of academics, without which there is no benchmark for evaluation and comparison. Oh well...