exams – mariaology

Playlist: April 2018

In a sense, April will always be exam season. It is a month of friction, one season rubbing against the next; only eventually the better qualities of spring bleeding through the residues of winter. April snow and April showers. April light, April gloam. It is perhaps the most poetic month, beautiful to say aloud, a little like peeling the sticker off an apple. April. It trills round to a crisp. April of anticipation, April of burgeoning knowledge. April is the sweetest, the cruelest month. Somewhere west of summer. There was a song from my childhood about a boy called Jack and a girl called Marie, young and sweet, this jangly song from the country about the city, tambourines and easy chords; a song about lovers who know one another so well, who fall asleep in wishing wells. It’s kind of simple but a strange song still, the chorus marking the passage of time and the sense that such love alters the landscape within you: ‘And the days will pass like falling rain / And the tide will turn both feeling strange’. Every good lyric contains a potential eternity. The song was ‘Flames’ by Roddy Hart and I burned it off a CD my mother bought at a festival, an early version of whatever the song would become on his debut album, Bookmarks. I always thought that song began in April, the skyline burning bright. April is the first month of that proper, bittersweet feeling that emanates from every street corner. The sense of memory, pungent and leaking through the pores of the city. Here is this place, here is that. Where we walked or kissed or did not. Where you stopped to buy cartons of mango Rubicon, lit a cigarette, slipped your fingers through the new baby leaves of the lindens. Fresh strains of pollen to catch in my eyes, my nose, the membranes of sight and scent. Where we turned over conversational stones that would build up our friendship, the lain-out exchange of opinions on class and politics and art that would form a foundation for seven years hence.

Yesterday, I hadn’t really slept for two days and was riding on a total sleep high until around 7pm. The dawn chorus accelerates a temporary insomnia. Neutral Milk Hotel: ‘How the notes all bend and reach above / The trees’. Sleep deprivation has a similar effect to many drugs: there is a delirium, a rush, a plunge, a sense of depersonalisation or detachment from the world around you. Dreams process all the nonsense of your unconscious and so when you don’t sleep, it just blurts out of you–the ramblings better saved for a diary or song. I have been bumping into things, bruising myself; I have been knocking over glasses of water. It is as though the arrangement of matter in the air around me is out of whack. It is somersaulting and shimmering clumsily into and against my body. It’s not an entirely unpleasant feeling, a sort of letting loose.

Last night, walking home from Yo La Tengo with the sky a violent Prussian blue, split yolklike to a pool of moon, I walked very fast and everything passed and blurred around me. That was the neon unremembered, the smearing of sense that refused all narrative. I passed a girl walking towards me, nearing home in a familiar neighbourhood. It was that thing were vaguely she looked like someone I’d know, I knew, but dressed kinda different. I glanced at her face as I passed and she glanced up at mine and our eyes met and that sort of threw me. Her eyes were intense and glittering, the same Prussian blue as the sky. They were fierce pools twinned by a feeling. When someone has their turbulence beaming through them, that was such a moment. As though someone wrenched a new crevasse inside me and all this new worry, pouring out like liquid gold. It will dry and crackle again in the sun, I’m sure.

This morning, fluttering in and out of treacly sleep, I dreamt I was serving tables at work except work was more like a train carriage, and I was stumbling around carrying trays and plates of food, trying to be nice. The layout of the floor at OM was superimposed upon this narrow train space. I served a table of two young girls and their mother. The girls were imploring their mother to take them to the aquarium. One of them had on a turquoise jumper spotted with tiny white clouds, a bit like the cover of Lisa Robertson’s The Weather, pressed in miniature. They were talking about the aquarium so I split in with my two cents, telling them about the one at Loch Lomond. The last viewing’s at four though, I said. You’ll maybe have to wait till the summer holidays. They didn’t seem perturbed by that. They started asking questions about the aquarium I could not answer, like Is there a tank of mermaids? Do they have sharks? Are there Nemo fish and what do they eat? Are there fish that eat other fish? Mindlessly, I brought to them three sticky toffee puddings meant for another table. They were talking about their summer, chattering away, the clouds moving brightly on Girl One’s jumper. I turned away, facing the other tables as I moved back along the carriage. I suddenly found myself weeping, those hot wet tears you know will take ages to shake. I was weeping for girlhood, for summers off school. Summers I’ll never get back. I felt sticky and silly; I cried in the kitchen and a hundred white checks swirled off the pass and sank down around me. I was too tired to lift a thing. I cried for summers I gave up for regiment, work and illness. I woke up pathetic on a true April morning, pale gold sun and the sound of someone in the distance, mowing their lawn. Everything else very still, a faint murmur of hard-drive hum, my body aching with the unspent sorrow of stupid dreams. Did I even give them the bill, in the end? What do I owe the company?

John James: ‘Looking for a new geological disposition’. I feel the deep, cramping pains of something within me changing, almost tectonic. I remember once a lump of moonstone, unpolished, ripe with numerous accessory minerals, making of its rainbows a plural extravagance. I snap pictures of the oil’s vibrant spectrality on the surface of grey city puddles. Good news arrives in emails. Little electricities go off within me. I soar for new mornings, longing to be smoothened from sleep. I walk around Stockbridge in the quiet hour of twilight, a thin moon eking over the sandstone buildings, the cobbled mews. This is a month of desperate turnings. I am always late, on some sort of overflow or else delay. I run for trains, backpack bumping against denim, catch my breath on the platform. The shops and houses are already thumping away into distance, as the train pulls out of the station. Drifting across the Central Belt’s perpetual rainfall, I am between two cities. Each hold a wonder I’m still trying to claw at, time after the fact. Hugging my knees. The city like a scratch-and-reveal picture, coming up multi-coloured when the carbon-black stuff flakes away, becomes merely the clastic textures of years forgotten. Some people use a penknife for greater accuracy, cutting apart the shapes of their lives. Prising. The black stuff ends up somewhere, lodges all constipated within us. I try not to think too much about Georges Bataille. The man who owns my restaurant shows off to his associates a pop art rendition of severed eyes, hung resplendently obscene among his art nouveau portraits of Burns’ adolescent lovers. He refers to the eye painting, quite obsequiously, as breathtaking. A little piece of me shrivels like a rose; I prise off a piece of cuticle and I know there are similar petals hidden all over this place, slowly rotting. Every eyelid a petal, peeled back and hidden. Someone in a pub somewhere is talking about bull fights. My mouth tastes like grapefruit and alcohol, souring.

There is the blood rush of filming a video in the cold. We spin each other round on shorelines, under subway tunnels, our yellow bags bump and clack in the dark. We run up Garnethill for the camera, we peer among the foliage of evergreen trees, needles sparkling darkness around us. The air is grey; it is thin and cirrussy, deprived of light. We are the only luminous colour, earth and fire and little ideas of pods in Tiree, black coffee, stop signs, cheese sandwiches imprecision of (!!!) that is elsewhere.

At once the blossoms appear. The white one outside my flat is luminous against the azure blue sky. I remember the endless pink blossoms of Maybole Road in Ayr, those bus stop mornings walking to Belmont, or to my father’s office, aged fourteen on my way to work experience. The lilac blossoms of my childhood garden, toasted Escherian limbs of the tree, the bluebells beneath; something beautiful I’ll never see again. Do lilacs even grow in the city? The cherry blossoms seem kind of tired this year; after all, it has been such a winter. They have pushed through snow and cold to get here, little withered blooms whose buds would drink the misty heat. Normal isn’t optional. I grow nostalgic for lunches of the past, eating apples on my break among the daffodils at Botanics. Feeling true sun on my skin, before retreating inside to a world without windows. The world of dust and vinegar.

I read W.S. Graham and make fortnightly pilgrimages to Greenock. I get off the train at Central and we wander Morrisons then back along the road for our workshops. This is a very peculiar Morrisons; it sells unnatural flowers, grafted in alien colours like the genetically-glitched foliage of Alex Garland’s Annihilation. In our workshop, we cover the theme ‘Journeys’. We learn new ways of listening; we map the skeins and twists of our lives, absorbing the lives of others. There are so many strains it’s like those skeins were severed along the way by numerous barbed wires. It hurts to get back on the train and be okay again, but then the late afternoon of sunshine in Glasgow takes our breath away. We are so alive and dazed. There are no scones in my pocket; not even almonds or acorns. I skim over maps of the land around Greenock, wondering about Loch Thom. As I wait for the train, the same time each week, I hear another train, parallel to ours being announced. It is the Ayr train, pulling away before us. I follow the straight road to the loch on the map, ‘stretching away across / Into the blue moors of Ayrshire’. We are surrounded by forest, then real forest. I am deepening by Galloway’s greens. I long like Graham, like ‘the man I made for land’, to somehow ‘Drown in the sudden sounding trees’. A greening comes over me, swallows me like sea.

I arrive at work with plastic-packaged slices of Pink Lady apple, holding them like a prize. Nobody takes up my offer, the crunch out of character, the taste of pesticides.

Buying a secondhand bike, I have started cycling again! It is a wonderful thing. I talk about it and listen to people’s cycling tales, their tidbits of advice; but mostly following the way their faces change when they talk about cycling, the smiles and the light in their eyes reminiscent of freedom. We share stories of bike-glimpsed sunsets, passing scenery, receding buildings, the wind off the Clyde alive in our hair. The wind off the Clyde a grey kind of blue, like the blue in my eyes, the blue that cried salt-licks of oceans. When I am cycling, my heart changing pace, I think less and I feel more free.

It is May tomorrow, and we are nearly in Gemini season. Season of air and light, of psychic twinship.

‘Sometimes all I need / Is the air that I breathe / And to love you’ (Simply Red)

‘And every breath that is in your lungs / Is a tiny little gift to me’ (The White Stripes)

For earnest asthmatic words I’m sorry.

Drawn from the eerie Louisiana marshland of True Detective to the hinterland gothic of Bates Motel to fading memories of the rain-sodden kirkyards bordering Amsterdam, I’m trying to look forward to burnished summer noons, the car that would drive us, the lavender pillow. Detail he remembered. I wear bright colours, then inexplicably black on Sundays. I stand up in gigs with an exhaustion that threatens to topple me, the music pulling my body onwards and backwards again like a tide, a forest susurration—‘Drown in the sudden sounding trees’. Mostly fantasies of falling asleep and waking up somewhere different. Taste the sesh. Everyone loosens in presence on Saturday, glazing the town on my way home with ice-sweet memory; hovering on the bridge to watch traffic lights pull fluoro taffy over the motorway. I listen to your voice recordings in the hour before dawn, darkness furling green and blue at the edges of dreams, a sonic mottling soothing to ambient forest. ASMR. An ecotone in which this quiet euphoric feeling meets flesh, sun-drenched song, rehearsal of sheltered Julys, been and gone. Elsewhere, he is coming off ket, listening to the new Grouper. Outside a same sky fills with similar shimmerings. Gifts of lemon-flavoured San Pellegrino, the aluminium pull that clicks out of sync. Meet or don’t meet your heroes. Nostalgia for dad-rock on a highway dragging you west where summer begins, a hot lump of sun in your throat.

Starts to melt, petals shed, a sugar glow…

Bjork – All is Full of Love

Junto Club – Shiviana

Oneohtrix Point Never – Black Snow

Grouper – Blouse

Porches – Country

Elvis Depressedly – Weird Honey

Vashti Bunyan – I’d Like to Walk Around in Your Mind

Broadcast – Valerie

Spring Onion – I Did My Taxes For Free Online

wished bone – reasons

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – Simple and Sure

The Sundays – Here’s Where The Story Ends

Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions – Let Me Get There

Rachel Angel – In Low

Angel Olsen – The Blacksmith

DRINKS – Blue From the Dark

Half Waif – Back in Brooklyn

Yo La Tengo – Tears Are in Your Eyes

Coma Cinema – Sad World

Elliott Smith – Cupid’s Trick

Many Rooms – Which is to Say, Everything

James Blake – Overgrown

The National – Bloodbuzz Ohio

Manic Street Preachers – Concrete Fields

The Innocence Mission – Green Bus

Laura Veirs – Everybody Needs You

Lucy Dacus – …Familiar Place

Sun Kil Moon – Lost Verses

Cat Power – Half of You

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – Refute

Savage Mansion – Older and Wiser

Emma Tricca – Mars is Asleep

R.E.M – E-Bow The Letter

Frieze Patterns for Vice City

NXNY8218

+0
a literal event in vast depths the mirror
of something monstrous, an atrocious
place now lengthily reproduced
they increase copulation, troubled
the origin abominable became dinner
in polemic, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable pages
conjectured before observation
it told me to confess with some undocumented
fiction all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
region of the index, volumes
on volumes a set examination
aback in the house on last pages
they recalled contradictions or mirrors
and spellings, agreed to event
the banal conjunction of men and reality.
+1
a literal eventuality in vast deputies the misadventure
of something monstrous, an atrocious
placebo now lengthily reproduced
they increment copulation, troubled
the original abominable became dinosaur
in police, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable pageants
conjectured before observatory
it told me to confess with some undocumented
fictionalization all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
register of the indian, voluntaries
on voluntaries a set examiner
aback in the houseboat on last pageants
they recalled contraltos or misadventures
and spenders, agreed to eventuality
the banal conjurer of manacles and realm.
+2
a literal evergreen in vast derbies the misanthrope
of something monstrous, an atrocious
placement now lengthily reproduced
they incubator copulation, troubled
the originator abominable became diocese
in policeman, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable pageboys
conjectured before observer
it told me to confess with some undocumented
fiddle all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
registrar of the indication, volunteers
on volunteers a set example
aback in the houseboy on last pageboys
they recalled contraptions or misanthropes
and spendings, agreed to evergreen
the banal conk of managements and realtor.
+3
a literal eviction in vast derelicts the misapplication
of something monstrous, an atrocious
placenta now lengthily reproduced
they incumbent copulation, troubled
the ornament abominable became dioxide
in policewoman, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable pagodas
conjectured before obsession
it told me to confess with some undocumented
fiddler all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
registration of the indicator, vomits
on vomits a set excavator
aback in the housebreaker on last pagodas
they recalled contraries or misapplications
and spendthrifts, agreed to eviction
the banal conker of managers and ream.
+4
a literal evidence in vast derivations the misapprehension
of something monstrous, an atrocious
plagiarism now lengthily reproduced
they incursion copulation, troubled
the orphan abominable became dip
in policy, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable pails
conjectured before obstacle
it told me to confess with some undocumented
fidget all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
registry of the indictment, vortexes
on vortexes a set exception
aback in the housecoat on last pails
they recalled contrasts or misapprehensions
and sperms, agreed to evidence
the banal connection of manageresses and reaper.
+5
a literal evil in vast derivatives the miscarriage
of something monstrous, an atrocious
plagiarist now lengthily reproduced
they indemnity copulation, troubled
the orphanage abominable became diphthong
in polish, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable pains
conjectured before obstetrician
it told me to confess with some undocumented
fief all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
regress of the indignity, votes
on votes a set excerpt
aback in the housefather on last pains
they recalled contributions or miscarriages
and spermatozoons, agreed to evil
the banal connoisseur of mandarins and reappearance.
+6
a literal evildoer in vast derricks the miscellany
of something monstrous, an atrocious
plague now lengthily reproduced
they indent copulation, troubled
the orthodoxy abominable became diploma
in polisher, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable painkillers
conjectured before obstruct
it told me to confess with some undocumented
field all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
regret of the indiscretion, voters
on voters a set excess
aback in the houseful on last painkillers
they recalled contributors or miscellanies
and spews, agreed to evildoer
the banal connotation of mandates and reappraisal.
+7
a literal evocation in vast dervishes the mischance
of something monstrous, an atrocious
plaid now lengthily reproduced
they indentation copulation, troubled
the oscillation abominable became diplomat
in politician, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable paints
conjectured before obstruction
it told me to confess with some undocumented
fielder all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
regular of the indisposition, votings
on votings a set exchange
aback in the household on last paints
they recalled contrivances or mischances
and spheres, agreed to evocation
the banal conqueror of mandibles and rear.
+8
a literal evolution in vast descants the mischief-maker
of something monstrous, an atrocious
plain now lengthily reproduced
they independence copulation, troubled
the osier abominable became dipper
in politico, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable paintboxes
conjectured before occasion
it told me to confess with some undocumented
fieldmouse all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
regularity of the individualist, vouchers
on vouchers a set excise
aback in the householder on last paintboxes
they recalled controls or mischief-makers
and sphinxes, agreed to evolution
the banal conquest of mandolins and rearrangement.
+9
a literal ewe in vast descendants the misconception
of something monstrous, an atrocious
plaint now lengthily reproduced
they independent copulation, troubled
the osteopath abominable became dipstick
in politics, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable paintbrushes
conjectured before occupant
it told me to confess with some undocumented
fiend all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
regulation of the inducement, vows
on vows a set excitement
aback in the housekeeper on last paintbrushes
they recalled controllers or misconceptions
and spices, agreed to ewe
the banal conscience of mandrakes and reason.
+10
a literal ewer in vast descents the misconstruction
of something monstrous, an atrocious
plaintiff now lengthily reproduced
they index copulation, troubled
the ostrich abominable became direction
in polity, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable painters
conjectured before occupation
it told me to confess with some undocumented
fiesta all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
regulator of the induction, vowels
on vowels a set exclamation
aback in the housemaid on last painters
they recalled controversies or misconstructions
and spiders, agreed to ewer
the banal consciousness of mandrills and reasoning.
+11
a literal exam in vast descriptions the misdeal
of something monstrous, an atrocious
plait now lengthily reproduced
they indian copulation, troubled
the otter abominable became directive
in polka, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable paintings
conjectured before occupier
it told me to confess with some undocumented
fife all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
rehash of the indulgence, voyages
on voyages a set exclusion
aback in the houseman on last paintings
they recalled contusions or misdeals
and spikes, agreed to exam
the banal conscript of manes and reassessment.
+12
a literal examination in vast deserts the misdeed
of something monstrous, an atrocious
plan now lengthily reproduced
they indication copulation, troubled
the ounce abominable became director
in poll, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable pairs
conjectured before occurrence
it told me to confess with some undocumented
fig all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
rehearsal of the industrialist, voyagers
on voyagers a set exclusive
aback in the housemaster on last pairs
they recalled conundrums or misdeeds
and spillages, agreed to examination
the banal consensus of man-eaters and reassurance.
+13
a literal examiner in vast deserters the misdemeanour
of something monstrous, an atrocious
plane now lengthily reproduced
they indicator copulation, troubled
the outbreak abominable became directorate
in pollutant, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable pals
conjectured before ocean
it told me to confess with some undocumented
fight all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
reign of the industry, voyeurs
on voyeurs a set excommunicate
aback in the housemother on last pals
they recalled conurbations or misdemeanours
and spins, agreed to examiner
the banal consent of mangers and rebate.
+14
a literal example in vast designs the miser
of something monstrous, an atrocious
planet now lengthily reproduced
they indictment copulation, troubled
the outbuilding abominable became directorship
in pollution, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable palaces
conjectured before octagon
it told me to confess with some undocumented
fighter all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
rein of the inebriate, vultures
on vultures a set excommunication
aback in the houseplant on last palaces
they recalled convalescents or misers
and spindles, agreed to example
the banal consequence of mangles and rebel.
+15
a literal excavator in vast designations the misery
of something monstrous, an atrocious
planetarium now lengthily reproduced
they indignity copulation, troubled
the outburst abominable became directory
in poltergeist, so memorable and aback
in vain the imaginable palates
conjectured before octave
it told me to confess with some undocumented
fighting all the atlases fruitless
or fortified modesty, such anonymous
reincarnation of the inequality, vulvas
on vulvas a set excrescence
aback in the housetop on last palates
they recalled convectors or miseries
and spines, agreed to excavator
the banal conservation of mangos and rebellion.

Thinking about Exams

Exams and I have a fair degree of history together. From that fateful first day in third year when I waited anxiously outside a gym hall to sit my Standard Grade English, to desperately scouring the labyrinth that is Glasgow Uni, trying to find my Honours English Literature exams, or waiting in the rain outside the OTC building, trying not to get run over by passing cars as rain splashed onto my notepad, exams and I have gone through hell and back together.

And they’re a funny thing, exams. Subject to much controversy too, especially in recent years with the dominance of technology over almost all other forms of learning and examination (who hands in a handwritten essay these days? is it even allowed?). Exams suddenly seem awfully old-fashioned. Individual (wobbly) desks, ink spilling everywhere, people writing with fury in an echoey hall. It seems a strange idea, to sit you in a room at the end of the year, thrust a piece of paper in front of you and force you to desperately pour out something resembling an essay in response to a set of unseen questions. I’ve thought about them long and hard over my time at school and college and uni, and come up with some pros and cons:

Pros:

The fear forces you to study, to recap the information learned over your course.
The early stages of studying can be fun. You’re relearning and rereading, and in the process making interesting connections between texts, based on a more mature understanding of the course gained from reflection.
It can be an opportunity to shine, to show that you can come up with something original in a very short space of time.
You learn the value of concision.
If the questions are well-designed, the exam can be a true test of your analytical abilities and skill for quick-thinking – there are not many other times when you have the adrenaline necessary to formulate a coherent piece of writing in such a short period.
It’s nice to realise that you’ve learned chunks of poetry by heart. Even if they begin to slip away fairly quickly once you’ve left the exam…

Cons:

Risk of being a memory test. While remembering and recalling information is important for lots of subjects from law to physics, English Lit and other humanities subjects is often about critical thinking skills rather than just remembering ‘data’ aka quotes. Lots of students memorise whole essays and go into the exam, then shoehorn and regurgitate what they’ve stored in their head. Sometimes this works, other times it ends badly. Either way, it isn’t testing much more than your ability to write fast and repeat.
Anxiety. This is a real problem for some people and can really hinder their performance in an exam, even if they’ve studied hard.
Breadth vs. depth. In an essay, with the advantage of time and access to material, it’s a lot easier to formulate a response which balances careful close reading and discussion of relevant secondary criticism and theory. In an exam, it’s too easy to fall back into the trap of plot summaries, even though you’re perfectly capable of analysis. Exams don’t always reflect your ability to synthesise material, or the extent of the research you’ve done.
Too much weighting. In my degree, exams are worth 50% of each course grade. There’s a lot of stake in those two hours, and if you have a brain freeze or something goes wrong, you can really drag down all that hard work you put in during the semester.

There are probably lots more, but here are the ones that immediately spring to mind. My solution would be not to scrap exams entirely, but to use them more effectively. Perhaps have mid-term close reading tests, which would examine your ability to respond ‘naturally’ to a text and your critical skills, rather than just your memory. Maybe also a 25% end of term exam, replacing the other 25% with another 3000 word essay. Maybe it will go that way in the future with credit standardisation; some universities don’t have exams for English Literature at all. The problem of course is that unlike subjects such as law and medicine and business, exam conditions are more unlikely to be part of any aspect of a future career sprung from a literary subject. While some jobs will require you to do set tests e.g. solving financial problems as part of the interview process, you are unlikely to encounter something like that in journalism, academia, publishing and so on. An essay with a deadline seems more akin to the work English Lit tends to lead to.

I can’t remember the worst thing that’s ever happened to me in an exam. There’s always that brief five minute panic when ‘your questions’ haven’t come up, and you have to radically rethink your answers and quickly choose a question; but usually in turns out in the end, and often the most spontaneous answers get the best mark. I guess one of the hardest exams I’ve ever done is Higher Music Listening. I mean, it shouldn’t be, but it just seems to be this horrible trail of riddles, where you have to discern different instruments out of tangles of sound in a very short space of time before the clip stops playing. Also, because you have to maintain concentration as a room of people listening to the same tape, your brain gets pretty muddled. And you can get distracted: I was so excited when the tape played The Strangler’s ‘Golden Brown’ that I made such a hasty decision about which rhythm change it contained that I put the wrong answer down. The coding sections of Higher Computing were also tricky, and writing four essays in an hour and a half for Higher Modern Studies is always the bane of your fifth year existence. Every student in Scotland who did languages will probably remember the terrifying voice that blasted the announcement about this being the STANDARD GRADE FRENCH LISTENING exam through the crackly stereo at the back of a gym hall, with all the aggression of someone holding you up in an armed robbery.

***

There was a golden moment towards the end of my last exam, when I realised there was less than ten minutes to go, and I was onto the conclusion, and soon that would be me – done forever. I definitely wouldn’t say that I’ll miss exams (hopefully, I’ll never have to do one again unless I decide to take up driving), but there’s something completely rewarding about the adrenaline rush and the nerves and the exhausting release afterwards that seems pretty unique. A bit like doing the Olympics, but for your brain (and your wrist). To anyone who still has exams to sit, good luck and remember it’s not the end of the world; and ultimately, they are always going to be a somewhat artificial test of your ability!

(Also, I’d love to hear your thoughts on whether exams are a good means of assessment or not for literature-based subjects).

12 Types You See in the Library: A Study of Students in their Native Habitat

So with finals approaching I’ve been spending nigh on every day in the depths of my university’s library. I thought, therefore, that it would be appropriate to report my observations on human life as it seems to occur in this environment…

I’ve identified 12 subtypes which emerge amidst the Darwinist conditions of computer shortages, desk squabbles, bright lighting and excess caffeine…

The sleepers: always a good start to a list, these types are keen on the trend for daytime napping. You will find them either tucked in a comfy chair, their legs propped on the nearest table, or else face down over their keyboard. Probably the source of much resentment, but perhaps it does increase productivity. Still, there could be beds provided, when desks are in such scarce conditions at this busy period…
The chatterers: they come in pairs. Often they arrive around 9-10 in the morning and stay till 5, interrupting each other’s study constantly and engaging in joint Facebook stalking and looking up photographs of famous people on Google Images and giggling without much hush. Tend to take 2 hour lunch breaks and leave all their stuff to hog the desks.
The fortress builders: you rarely glance a peek at these specimens, as they tend to erect large towers of hardback books on their desks. It is unlikely that the books themselves will be opened, but the careful assemblage of pens, paper, notepads and books is very important to their sense of zen.
The aggressive opportunists: to be found hovering about on every level, clutching their phones to their faces and occasionally hesitating an anxious glance around them, as if they were bird-spotting. These types basically scour every floor desperately waiting for someone to vacate their computer so they can dive in. You’ve got to feel sympathy for them, though there is something rather alarmingly aggressive about the way they rush to your desk as soon as you have clicked ‘log off’. It’s like they have super vision.
The stressor: he or she will either be a weepy type, or a sweary type. The weepy type invites deep sympathy, as it is awful to see a fellow human reduced to the state of tears or panic attack over university work. To be honest though, I have encountered more of the latter. In particular, it is common to see finance students sweating it out in the upper levels, swearing under their breath at a screen of what I assume to be frustrating figures, occasionally slamming their fist down upon a hefty textbook.
The gruesome eater: disappears for an hour, comes back with some disgusting excuse for a lunch gleaned from any number of surrounding convenience stores or supermarkets. They favour the more odorous of foodstuffs, and are inclined to make vile slurping noises as they lick their tub of oily pasta or packet of tuna sandwiches. The worst, perhaps, is the Monster Munch crunch.
The early bird endurance workers: these more elusive types tend to congregate in the upper floors with the segregated desks and rule of silent study. They arrive around 8am to get their favoured seat (the same one every day it seems) and are there for most of the day, working away like beavers. Will disappear occasionally for a coffee or cigarette, but rarely leave their desks, which begin piling up very quickly with masses of paper and scribbly notes.
The portable secretary: seems to get a phone call at least once an hour. Will either proceed to talk freely about a mate’s sex life with the entire floor listening, or else make a panic dash to the nearest ‘quiet zone’, leaping heroically over trailing cables. Sometimes is away and the phone will ring unanswered for twenty minutes until a brave stranger plucks up the courage to turn it off in his or her absence.
The rebel: turns up mid-afternoon and somehow still manages to blag a seat somewhere. Pulls the plug out of a PC to stick their laptop on charge. Doesn’t care. Eats trifle on level 8. Whose gonna challenge ’em? Snorts heartily with laughter watching silly Youtube videos in the middle of the day whilst anxious students rush around looking for a computer they can study on.
The drifter: seems not to ever do actual work, but to spend all day scanning every level for anyone he or she happens to be acquainted with, stopping, in an elaborate trail of procrastination, to gabber and pester said acquaintances. Tends to wear a school leavers’ hoodie, and very soft cotton joggers.
The library lightweight: most likely in first year, though the trait can continue up into honours sometimes. Tends not to venture beyond level 3. Dips into the library between classes and sits on Facebook for an hour or so whilst gobbling a sandwich loudly.
Lastly…(perhaps the worst) the foot shuffler: Need I say more? – Takes 10 minutes to walk 10 metres, owing to the way he or she drags their feet across the carpet. Pick your feet up when you walk, for God’s sake!

Easter Dreams

How old am I here? I’m somewhere in England, awake early as usual from sleeping on the floor, stripping away the remnants of another dream about chocolate. A dream about chocolate? Oh wait, it’s Easter. The very word Easter sounds confectionary; like ‘viscount’ – a name recalling the little minty biscuit I used to have in my packed lunches – Easter connotes the crack of a thick chocolate shell, a glut of pastel colours, the consuming of cuteness. Maybe I’m seven. My mum is away in Brighton for the day and comes back with two beanie babies: a fluffy yellow chick and a pale blue bunny. Maybe I’m seventeen, walking out to Kildoon monument just to see the lambs in the fields and hope for a happier existence. You know, that’s Easter too.

Those who condemn reckless consumerism bewail the fact that Easter has forgotten its true message: the sacrifice of Christ, the promise of rebirth. It is a solemn hope that perhaps may only be touched by those with faith; it bears the risk of becoming kitsch in the Easter Story worksheets we used to cut out at school with those zigzag scissors. You know, ‘assemble the story of Jesus and the tomb’, where pupils tended more to desecrate Christ with bunny ears more than celebrating his existence. I remember as a child going to church on Easter Sunday and falling into the soft ambience of everyone’s prayer and the familiar stories about The Stone that Rolled and Jesus’s last day and all the other things that have slipped from my brain. I remember being given a Creme Egg by the priest on the way out and thinking he had handed me something precious and holy – but later eating it anyway. Did I feel guilty, biting into this symbol of the blood and sweat and sacrifice of Christ? The problem is, consumerism is good at assuaging such guilt with feelings of pleasure. Everyone’s doing it; everybody’s merry. And after the church ceremony I remember late afternoons watching a certain family member fall asleep after a generous glass of sherry…

Is it wrong that we value booze and chocolate eggs more than the faith and the story? Perhaps…but there is a certain gratitude in the exchange of happiness, the sweet serotonin glow of too much chocolate and a long Sunday afternoon spent with one’s family.

How did we used to spend our Easter Sundays? Painting boiled eggs and rolling them down the hill at Miller Park. Fighting with my brother over who got to lick the bowl of melted chocolate, leftover from making crispy cakes. A walk to another park, somewhere in Burgess Hill or Milton Keynes, watching our dog do long jumps over a river filled with old trollies and sofas. Munching fizzy belts and trying to do loop-the-loops on the swing, never feeling sick but still exhilarated (I wouldn’t mind doing all that now, but I’d probably vomit rainbows). These were the good old, carefree Easters.

When you hit fifteen, suddenly the Easter holidays are all about studying (or they are in theory). The endless, six am days spent copying diagrams for Biology or churning out practice essays for Modern Studies, or falling asleep in the sun with a Computing textbook over my head. Cooking some complex casserole in the evening and doing the washing up afterwards while my brother messes about with his playlist of ‘doing dishes’ music (or maybe it was the other way round; I always had the better iPod). The Easter of first year where I had a weekend down in Suffolk for my Grandpa’s 90th birthday, and got so excited about staying in the countryside that I went for a walk every morning at 7am, just to glimpse the pretty English fields and flowers. Oh, and the postman I accidentally saw peeing in the river – but that’s another story. The Easter afternoon where I laboured over a terrible wee screenplay for Advanced Higher English; or the one I spent laid up watching crappy old films because I had the house to myself for a week and it seemed a waste to bother with ceremony. That was, incidentally, a very good week: I watched three series of Mad Men back to back and walked up a hill and got my hair dyed and wrote about twenty practice essays for my uni exams. There is great productivity to be had in solitude.

Productivity in action... — Productivity in action…

The things I love most about Easter are basically the things I love about spring. As all the songs and hymns might sing, there is a simple joy to seeing the first daffodils and blossoms and lambs in the fields. Seeing everything through the spectrum of pastel colours, wearing lavender jumpers and polishing my nails mint green. At uni, I was too stingy to buy Easter flowers, so I would walk all the way along the Kelvin (halfway to Milngavie) just to find loose daffodils to purloin from their ungraceful state, where they were scattered along the path by wayward children.

Back at school, Easter signalled the season of study leave; of long lunchtimes sitting on the hill gossiping while people were screaming at their football behind us. Bunnies are also very cool. I think I believed in the Easter Bunny more than I believed in Santa Clause. Maybe it’s the animal factor; there’s something creepy and alluring about anything anthropomorphic, reminding us of the fragility of our status as humans. The Easter Bunny, moreover, gets less visual representation than Santa in popular culture, leaving the onus on the child’s imagination to conjure what he (or maybe she; or should Easter Bunnies even have a gender?) looks like. One upon a time, my Easter Bunny was soft and probably adorned with buttons and ribbon, juggling a multitude of eggs with his paws and vanishing without trace at dawn (unlike Santa who takes his fill from a mince pie and carrot). Now, I can’t help but think of the horrifying rabbit, Frank, from Donnie Darko. The one that appears either as a schizophrenic vision or some weird spirit guide from the near-possible-present-future. Maybe that’s growing up; realising the terror in your favourite childhood memories. Pulling the latent darkness out of cultural myths and fairy tales. Still, there’s a pleasure in that too.

So yeah, today I won’t be doing much for Easter. I can hear the church bells ring for the morning service, and there are a few birds tentatively weaving their melody into the stiff Sunday silence. As far as I know, there aren’t any lambs in Glasgow, and that lovely lecturer who used to praise heavily the wonders of ‘curved chocolate’ is sadly retired. Today I will have to drag myself out of bed at some point to fall back into the world of studying, swapping festive joy for Johnson’s Rasselas, and juvenile pleasures for The Bell Jar. The only chocolate I have in the flat might be Tesco’s 30p Value, but secretly I’ll be celebrating Easter, if only in nostalgia.

My Mum gets extra parent points for always making us Easter baskets

Tag: exams

Playlist: April 2018

Frieze Patterns for Vice City

Thinking about Exams

Easter Dreams

Menu