Exams

Yesterday I finally had the written Danish exam that I have been waiting for, for so long. While days past and I got closer and closer to it, strong feelings started to set in and the nights became longer and more sleepless than otherwise. This made me think about exams, how we approach them, how they take place and what they mean for us…

When I was younger and in school, I was one of those good kids that studied a lot and had good grades. I was far from being the best one in my class, but I was in top five and I was really good at math. In fact I was that good that I went to school math contests, all the way to the national level where I even won awards. I am not writing about this to brag, but rather to tell you in what way I’ve changed because of it. Most importantly, I learned how to handle exams: every year I attended at least 3 serious contests, which took somewhere between 3 and 4 hours. I gradually learned how to deal with my nervousness and how to best approach it, which really helped when I had the huge end-of-highschool exams and started university. I dare say I had an advantage over the others just because I was more used to exams.

At the beginning I was so nervous that I would get out of the exam room totally red, my hair a mess because I would keep playing with it, and sometimes with recent memories of my heart beating so fast that I thought it wanted to go for a run. However, things changed and now I am nervous just before the exam. But then I get my exam questions, calm down and start doing my job. I do think a certain amount of nervousness does you good, as you get more ambitious and maybe a lit more cautious. Therefore I believe I might have reached my optimum exam-nervousness.

When I came to Denmark, it was a bit different for a while, as all of a sudden I had only oral exams, as opposed to Romania where I had just one unlucky oral exam and everything else was written. But I adapted fast and I started preferring oral over written.

And then… yesterday came. I cannot remember when I was last that nervous about an exam. I think the explanation would be that it’s so different then what I am used to – math, computer science, very precise and well defined things, and then all of a sudden I have to write argumentative texts about God knows what. I have to admit that I always had problems writing (and this blog helped a lot in that regard) and that I often used my mother to do my Romanian homework assignments as a kid.

Nevertheless, my strong experience took over and calmness set in when I received the exam papers.

As for how it went… I think it was decent. I don’t know the results yet and… I am not even sure I will want to share. Maybe they will be so bad that I will have to mourn my language skills afterwards! Until then, I have to prepare for the next stage: the oral.