The horror of exams

My heart is pounding, my hands are shaking and there’s a leaden feeling in the pit of my stomach. My pupils are dilated and my digestive process has ground to a halt. My sympathetic nervous system is kicking in and activating its ‘fight or flight’ response. And how do I know all this? Because the subject of ‘Stress, and the Body’s Reaction to It’ is one of the topics on the AQA AS-level psychology syllabus — an exam I’m just about to sit. Stress? I don’t just know about it. I’m living it.

Three decades after I last took an exam, I am standing outside the sports hall of my local sixth-form college with five other adults and several hundred 17-year-olds preparing to submit ourselves to everything the question setters can throw at us. I have not felt this scared since Uncle Jack showed his true colours in the final series of Breaking Bad.

A voice in the queue mentions that there are only 15 marks between an A grade and a D. Worried faces do the maths. If we mess up the mighty 12-mark essay question (will we remember the difference between ‘discuss’ and ‘describe’ and ‘evaluate’?) and miss the point of a couple of two-markers, we are sunk. Our grades will plunge from here to ignominy, regardless of how much psychology we know. The doors of the hall swing open and the stampede for desks begins. Mine is wobbly and bears the usual legends: ‘Sod Off’, and ‘So-and-So Is a Such-and-Such Obscenity’. Invigilators patrol the aisles, checking our see-through pencil cases for evidence of cheat sheets and scrutinising our photo IDs (yes, really): driving licences and passports for the golden oldies, student cards for the rest.

As the clock ticks towards zero hour, a recorded voice reminds us that this is our last chance to hand in our mobile phones, that we must write in black ink and that we are now under exam conditions.