As you turn your paper over, your mind inevitably goes blank for at least the first ten minutes and you start thinking back to the days when you had a life, in the pre-revision era. Suddenly though, fear takes over. You jab your forehead incessantly with a pen in the hope that this will encourage some sort of intelligent thought to flow from your brain to the paper via your biro. And miracles of miracles, it does. For the next three hours you write constantly, not even pausing for breath, let alone pausing to pick up a polo. In any case their destiny is to get sticky at the bottom of your bag because you stupidly opened the whole packet. But none of that matters anymore because you’re on fire. Nothing can stop you now. And three hours later you’re mentally exhausted and your arm wants to drop off. But you’ve got through it, or at least you think you have…
The post-exam ritual involves everyone saying; ‘Ok lets talk about anything other than the exam because that was absolutely awful.’, and then you all proceed to talk about nothing else but the exam for the next hour. Where you thought you’d done well, now after having listened to what everyone else put, well there’s just no way you could have passed. I wouldn’t even pass myself if I were marking it; the answers I put were so irrelevant. Quality not quantity is what we’ve always been told and I forgot that golden rule. I have an aching arm for nothing.

等你拿到卷子，你在前10分钟大脑里必然一片空白，并开始回想复习备考前的那段时光，那时你有自己的生活。尽管如此，恐惧还是突如其来。你不停地用笔戳着前额，仿佛这样就能从大脑中汲取一些灵感，让它顺着圆珠笔流淌到卷面上似的。这一招还真管用，奇迹中的奇迹出现了。接下来的三个小时你不歇气地写着，只是偶尔拿起一支棒糖。因为你愚蠢地打开了一整包棒糖，所以每一次它们都会粘在你的书包底上。但也管不了那么多了，已经火烧眉毛了，现在什么都阻止不了你。过了三个小时，你已精疲力尽，胳膊就象要断了一样。可是你成功地闯过来了，至少你自认为你闯过来了……

考后司空见惯的场景是：每个人都在说“我们谈点别的吧，就是别谈考试，那太恶心了”，接下来的一小时你们所有人别的什么都不谈，只是谈论考试。你觉得自己考得不错，等听完大家说的话，这下好了，根本没有过关的可能。我填的答案连我自己这一关都过不了，它们是那样不着边际。重质不重量是我们耳熟能详的金科玉律，我把这一条给忘了。写得胳膊发痛却一无所获。