Thursday, April 24, 2008

A post about the next best thing to every freakin' thing in this world.

More or less on this very date , particularly in the month of April, exactly one year back, I was in a similarly contemplative mood that I am in right now.

The exact reasons for being so might not be exactly exact, but they are more or less exact.
I had my university exams back then. I have my university exam tomorrow.
But there are differences too.
Last year I was mildly paranoid about not having studied. This year I am mildly paranoid about not being mildly paranoid about not having studied.

Last year I was contemplative about what questions might adorn the question paper next day because I wasn't too sure I understood the meaning of the terms cited in the syllabus.

This year, I am contemplative about what questions might adorn the question paper tomorrow because, frankly,
1>The photocopy of the syllabus, which has been , if you must know, photocopied from another photocopy of the syllabus was too light-inked to decipher.

2> I am both profoundly confused and confusingly profound about the different papers. i.e. I have been confusing the contents of Paper 6 with that of paper 5 and the contents of paper 8 with that of paper 7 ..etc . so logically , tomorrow is the exam date for paper 7 and I am , as you might have guessed not too sure about what to study. The faintly- discernible, too light-inked to be true syllabus isn't helping either.

3> Three days back, when I was in a similar situation and was aimlessly convincing myself to study for the exam to be held the next day, yet another wonderfully and weirdly fulfilling thing happened. To understand the exact nature of the wonderfulness and the weirdness, you must know a little about ...(sigh)..the syllabus of that particular paper. The paper in question was Editing and the newest new syllabus devised by the university had nothing to with Editing. So, our tactful editing teacher, who by the way, refuses to understand the basic exam-hating tendencies of the youth at large and of our department in particular told us categorically that it would be best to study all the editing related stuff mentioned in the old syllabus and all the non-editing related stuff mentioned in the new syllabus. Apart from confusing my alert-yet-immune-to-confusion state of mind, the religious following of my teacher’s categorical instructions would mean, to cut a long story short, a lot of studying. Which, my alert-yet-immune-to-confusion state of mind was not fully equipped for. So I decided and not so surprisingly ended up doing the next best thing to every freaking thing in this universe--> Procrastinating.
So I was in a multicolored mood. The colors being confusion, alertness, irritation, impatience and a certain level of uncertainty on the lines of “so will the university set questions conforming to the editing related old syllabus or the non-editing related new syllabus.”

Here comes the wonderfully and weirdly fulfilling thing I was talking about.
The exam got postponed.
By one whole month.
Now another wonderful and weirdly fulfilling thing happened while I was writing my Paper 1 exam.
All my life, the one thing I’ve hated conspicuously and consistently is writing exams. I mean the actual act of writing answers on cheap quality paper. Now this hatred stems entirely from the fact that my classmates, at all given stages of academic life have shown this affinity towards becoming paper-crazy maniacs during exams.

Like they will go on writing and writing and writing and will go on asking for extra sheets. Now this always makes me heinously insecure about getting the lowest marks, since, clearly I take the least amount of extra sheets. I can’t write. To be more precise I cant write crap for my answers. To be a little more precise, I can’t waste my dazzling crap-writing abilities on answers being written for exams.
Those abilities are to be wasted here, dear blog.
Personally I don’t think I am much of a writer. Since I can only write on topics either dangerously specific, like “a close study of the moles on the upper lips of the hypochondriacs in the Shuiguohu district of central china” or scathingly vague, like “Does George Bush really look like a monkey?”

Anyway, back to the wonderfully weird thing that happened. My classmates-turned paper-crazy maniacs found out that the university has adopted a new rule of debarring students from taking extra sheets!

To top it all, I seem to have the most creatively distracting conversations only and only during the exams …like,

Fraand : Hi, Ads , are you studying?

Me: I am feeling very lost and naked.[I generally come up with alarming answers when I am asked alarming questions as such]

Fraand: Yeah, what will happen?

Me: I am sure tomorrow will be a mixture of the two kinds of nightmares people generally have. One, where they turn up in the exam hall with zero preparation and two, when they suddenly realize they’ve come out of their house without wearing any clothes.
Fraand: hmmmm.

Me: so did you study?

Fraand: yeah, I was studying the factories act of 23 September 1938.

Me : WHAT? Excuse me? How the hell is that in the syllabus for video production? More importantly, what the hell is that?

Fraand: I was studying for the next exam. Not for tomorrow.

Me: ok. Whew. I almost had a heart attack.

Fraand: so wassup with you?

Me: Nothing. I am just feeling very dazed and confused since morning…

Fraand: and?

Me: Yeah, in the evening I watched Harry Potter and Ally Mcbeal side by side. My head is a lot clearer now.

Fraand: you know what I realized?

Me: what?

Fraand: we don’t know what we look like. I mean we have just seen ourselves in the mirror or in snaps or on video. All those are virtual, reflected images, we will only be able to see the REAL us after we die!!!!!!!!


Since I anyway have lost and forgotten the point I’d set out to make in the beginning of the post, I’ve decided to end this post without any conclusion and therefore definitely very abruptly.

28 comments:

~Moo-lah Buz!nezzz~ said...

hmmmm....
"All those are virtual, reflected images, we will only be able to see the REAL us after we die!!!!!!!!"
deep and profound(??!!!)!!

But you killed a cockraoch??!

ad libber said...

The exam got postponed :O really? will ours too? Was it because of the panchayat stuff?

dreamy said...

@ Moo-lah ..i know. very very profound. and incidentally, While i was at the task of killing it, I suddenly remembered something you'd said about killing roaches, though i can't remember exactly what.


@ ad libber, nope. Only vocational Part 3 paper 6 exams got postponed because there was either a paper leak or a misprint in the question paper. Only CU can come up with such stuff.

Anonymous said...

you know the confused state of mind(who am i asking...of course you know)where you don't know whether u should be happy about giving your practicals before theory or sad about the fact that u will probably end up failing both cause clearly (what we were failing anyways).....
they very act of giving exam is so redundant ....the university clearly expects us to write photocopied answers(anyone who has been giving lots of exams will know)so people invented machines for doing this kind of stuff and by definition machines are supposed to make life esaier for us (of course only after someone concieved the idea of inventing them and didnot procrastinate)i mean we should just hand out to them the photocopied hadouts which were handed out to us in the first palce ...it will make life easier for all of us ,save a lot of paper and reduce global warming blah blah and as pointed out by your friend we dont even know how we look...so hat is the point in knowing anythng at all

Unknown said...

We engineering folks are saved because:
a) We do not have to study.
b) We are not allowed to take more sheets than the handful we are given in the form of a booklet.
c) We do not have to study.

onnesha said...

"Personally I don’t think I am much of a writer".
aaw.modest you!
and i have always wondered about never getting to see oneself.isnt it like the biggest suspense on earth?
damn!

coffee stain said...

"To be a little more precise, I can’t waste my dazzling crap-writing abilities on answers being written for exams."
amen for that.....
and a lil correction if i may.. i mean from an ex-engg himself....
1. we had to study.... but we
never did
2.i think answers are to be short
and precise... we had 40 pages
in our booklet...we didn need
more
3. aah hell i forgot the third :P

Amazing Graze said...

oooff, i know these fraand types, studying for the next exam!!!! they'll die of cramming too much useless info into their heads someday,i tell u. Their brains will burst out in rebellion.
u killed a cockroach? i can't kill 'em, just cant, i'm too scared of 'em. :(

de trop said...

fraand ta ke ads?? and why only u ve such conversation during xam?? are you schizophrenic??

Llama said...

Those paper-crazy maniacs are very scary. Being one of those who took as few extra sheets as humanly possible, you have my sympathies.

And I think I speak for your blog-droppers-by when I say, we are all glad that you save your "dazzling crap-writing abilities" for your blog. :D

And no offense, but your Fraand is very weird.

ad libber said...

It prolly figures that as a CU student, that is the only part of the post which I manage to register :(

darkling said...

*sigh*....

:DDDDDD nicely contemplative...and colourful and also reminded me of my shitty life :((

coffee stain said...

lucky number 13...... ek week wait korte hobe na 20'r jonne....ppl are ona roll :P

Angry Voices said...

Naked in an exam hall :|
Your post reminded me of a recurrent nightmare. Only it wasn't me who was naked.

As long as it doesn't get TD-ious

onnesha said...

and that makes it 15.isnt that way above ur 12 mark?
now pliss post the next post.
pliss.plass.pliss.

dreamy said...

@ zilli girl, your comment is very very long. Thank you. I like long comments.

@ Saptarshi, thats very nice and comfortable as opposed to being confused between whether we have to study or not, which we generally are.
and the booklet rule is absolutely fabulous.


@ onn, yes. The suspense be damned. But you are not even slightly damned. You are blessed.For satisfying us comment hungry bloggers. And you dont even take payment :P

@ Coffee stain.... great. 40 pages?
I am sure even if we were provided 40 pages , people would go on taking extra sheets. Damn them

@ Amazing Greys, I am also pretty scared of them. But you gotta brace yourself and face the situation. Think about how one cockroach is gonna run inside your bed, have sex, procreate and give birth to thousands of tiny little cockroaches. Its better to kill one rather than tolerate a thousand little ones.Plus I am not letting anyone have babies under my bed.No. Not at my cost. I will not let people exploit me. I will lash back. And it applies to cockroaches as well

I cant believe I actually gave a one-para speech on cockroaches at four in the morning. Exams . sigh. [wish me luck .all of you.please]




@ Darkling. Thankooo. Your dp reminds me of a recent sunscreen ad on Television.


@ Mishtizaa. Eki. Dont you know? I keep having such conversations throughout. around the clock. Just that the degree of joblessness increases during exams. Like now. I am always too lazy to reply back to comments. But since I have my 100 marks Final university exam paper in about 7 hours from now, I am writing long and elaborate replies.




Poojo.c, Thankoo. Your sympathies are appreciated muchly :D
and my fraand is weird. Very



Ad libber, sometimes I wonder what my blog would have been like without the occasional CU rants.


Rishi and Onn, thankoo. Four more to go. Yippee

@ Angry voices. Thank you for commenting. :-|

As usual I dint get your comment. I am guessing TD is somebody's initial. or maybe the short for something. But i cant figure what.Blame it on the exam that I have to give in about seven hours time. :-| :-|

Angry Voices said...

I meant TP :|
sorry :(

little boxes said...

hmmm profundity becomes a hot favourite with everyone before exams...

Noisy Autist said...

your fraand scares me.

What's In A Name ? said...

A signature pre-exam post by dreamy.....of course with her own signatures all over it. but then....in your part of the world exams do get postponed...not ours.

* sigh *

and Saptarshi, We Engineers do have to study. And it feels so suffocatingly sordid as this ...to study(for the last 3 days before D-day i.e for me at least) for the last sem, that too one month ahead of the usual schedule. But then, you people won't know till next year where the MUSIC awaits you.

all luck.

onnesha said...

its 20 now.21 to be precise.can we have the post now?
jeez.am i what can be called a blog-stalker?
:O
:(

Llama said...

22...
Post post!

Royal Bengal Tigress said...

My exams got over yesterday! YAY!

Reems. said...

"So I was in a multicolored mood. The colors being confusion, alertness, irritation, impatience"

True,true.I used to eat as much as I could to drive away the irritation. :|

For those paper-crazy maniacs,YES.My class-mates used to have "who will ask for most number of papers in less amount of time?" competitions.

This was some wonderful-n-not-weird post on exam mania.

dreamy said...

@ little boxes...tell me about it! :D

@ noisy autist... lol...yeah I do make her come across as scary ..sometimes.


@ Whats in a name....all ze best to ze. :P


@ onnesha and Poojo... I will ...B-)

@ Reems ...thankoo :P

Electronic Goose said...

Worrying about not worrying -- I love it!

Sphinx said...

you're as close to adrian mole as it can possibly get.

causticji said...

"Fraand" is gonna be the next great existential filmmaker :P

Welcome to MU engineering, in particular the 2nd and 3rd yr of my college (internal evaluation). Here, the more you write, the better it is. So the initial 32-page booklet isn't enough - almost everyone takes one more of those, apart from many other idealistic habits, enabling them to consistently score more than 80% in each of these 4 mid-sems (Heck, tronix-telecom toppers fight around the 90% mark)