Tuesday, October 19, 2004

lemme see your 'game face'

So here we are, two hourlies tomorrow, zero studying done, if you don't count the one hour going over the condensed lecture notes. I was just thinking about this person I know who completely panics when faced with absolutely incomprehensible questions in exams. I suppose a lot of people are like that, but when you're used to facing papers which might as well be in Chinese for all the sense you can make of them, you get tougher and you learn an essential skill, which we informally call 'chorhna'. The gist of it is to utter complete crap without giving away the fact that you're in foreign water and have very little or no idea what you're talking about. The key is to mix in a healthy dose of interesting sounding terms related to whatever subject you're dealing with and, if possible, make up a few terms of your own. If you're lucky, you have a teacher who'll need to get out his/her dictionary to figure out what on earth you're talking about, and just to get the whole thing off their backs, they'll give you a passing grade.

There are downsides, though. One old law teacher actually wrote 'Less stories, more actual case law, please!' on my midterm report card. Rather embarrassing.

The point, though, was that an exam paper that seems like you personal Golgotha is nothing to get panicky about. Just breathe.

Misha at Tuesday, October 19, 2004

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