Exam fever

Impossibility

Read the question
Do the question
Turn the paper over.
Read that question
Check that question
Check your answer over.

The question says…
‘It takes 2 men to dig a hole 4 feet deep.’
I don’t read any more.
2 men.
Why 2 men? Why not 1 man on his own? Or a gang of labourers? And why does it have to be men anyway?
Maybe it’s boys.
Digging a pond or looking
For buried treasure
Or
Just for fun.
In which case it certainly wouldn’t be 2 of them.
There’d be at least 4, because that’s how boys hang around together.
In groups.
Big ones.
I’m a girl. Most girls wouldn’t dig a hole.
Not one four feet deep anyway.
We might dig a small hole, and turn it into an ornamental lake, with miniature trees and houses around it made out of twigs and moss and flowers and pretty little pebbles. And then make up stories about it, with handsome princes and pretty princesses begging to be rescued.
So I just don’t understand why two men would dig a hole four feet deep. What would be the point?
Sir, I can’t do this question.


Exam fever

Oh no! It’s that time of the year again
I’d much rather stay here in bed.
My stomach’s all wobbly, my eyes are in pain
And my arms feel as heavy as lead.

My stomach’s all wobbly, my eyes are in pain
And my arms feel as heavy as lead.
My throat is on fire, my tongue tastes like a drain
There’s a sledgehammer pounding my head.

My throat is on fire, my tongue tastes like a drain
There’s a sledgehammer pounding my head.
Who is it who’s stuffed cotton wool in my brain?
Is this what it’s like to be dead?

Who is it who’s stuffed cotton wool in my brain?
Is this what it’s like to be dead?
Oh no! It’s that time of the year again
I think I’ll just stay here in bed.

Exam fever

Oh no! It’s that time of the year again
I’d much rather stay here in bed.
My stomach’s all wobbly, my eyes are in pain
And my arms feel as heavy as lead.

My throat is on fire, my tongue tastes like a drain
There’s a sledgehammer pounding my head.
Who is it who’s stuffed cotton wool in my brain?
Is this what it’s like to be dead?

The thought of the sitting, the standing, the waiting -
The walking around in the gloom,
The watching, the listening, the prospect of marking
Just fills me with feelings of doom.

The pens and the pencils, the numerous papers
Piled high on my desk with a scowl
The squinting, the marking of young expectations
Are turning me into an owl.

Which means I’m not sleeping, and hardly am eating
There just seems no end to the task
Of checking, correcting, trying to be understanding
With no other adult to ask.

For being an examiner is lonely, destroying
It’s only me and the papers and all
My desperate existence is just filled with marking
With backbreaking, eye watering toil.

The thought of all this has now filled me with pain
And my eyes are already quite red
Oh no! It’s that time of the year again
I think I’ll just stay here in bed.