Why I don't care about exams

It’s Tuesday 24^th August, 2010. I’m awake at 5am, refreshing my painfully slow internet on my Samsung Genio touch, trying to access the Edexcel online results from a room in RAF Valley. The page loads, and I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

When you’re predicted 10A*s, anything less is a failure. When you’ve already set your sights on studying history at a top university, coming away with an A at GCSE level is inconceivable. Until it happened. Now, I find it laughable, but back then? I just cried.  

I don’t think I’ve ever over-reacted quite as much (apart from that time someone in hall refused to pass me the potatoes whilst I was dieting, but that’s another story…)

I was upset because I somehow thought that my worth was inextricably linked to my academic performance. More importantly, I was upset because I knew that I wanted to go to a mythologised version of Cambridge, and this was a sure sign that I wasn’t clever enough. They’d never lower their standards to let in someone who only got an A at GCSE in the subject they were applying for.

I suppose that for some people, Cambridge is just a place you end up at on the way to somewhere else. It’s a place where a lot of people go, it’s a route into investment banking, into stand-up comedy, a chance to be accepted by the rest of your family. I know that I’m not alone in taking a different approach. I created a ‘Cambridge’ in my head. ‘Cambridge students’ were a class apart – they appeared as omniscient beings on University Challenge, or rowed down the Thames, or became famous comedians and actors. I’d look up famous people on Wikipedia and have a funny little list in my head ‘he went to Cambridge’, ‘she went to Cambridge’, ‘he was at Cambridge and studied history’... it’s embarrassing to admit it, but it has left me with the ability to match celebrities to their college – something that’s come in handy in a surprising number of conversations over the past couple of years.

I just really wanted to go to Cambridge. I knew it was a stupid product of my over-active imagination, and I was painfully aware just how hard and how fragile a dream it was, but it was my dream and I let it grow to the point where anywhere else would be a failure. This was in 2010. By the time I got round to applying for universities, I was a lot more sensible and could envision a happy future at any of my five choices.  

My Cambridge was not a means to a well-paying job in the City, or a road into further academic study, my Cambridge was an end in itself. What an end it’s been so far.

When I watched the boat race in the year I got my offer, it crossed my mind that I would be living in the same city as these people, not that I would be training in the same facilities, rowing with the same colour blades.  I know people who have done things like University Challenge, or been in Footlights productions. Occasionally (like, a couple of times in two years), a renowned academic even says something nice about my essays.

It’s time to refuse to define myself by a number attached to a couple of hours’ worth of frenzied essay writing. I cared so much about my GCSEs and my A levels because they were what would allow me to get into Cambridge. And now? Like I said, I’m not here because I want to walk away with BA (cantab) at the end of my name. I’m here because this is where I want to be. Right here, right now, with the crazy intelligent people, and the inspiring rowing people, and the eccentric supervisors, and the beautiful architecture, and the libraries, and just… the fact that it’s Cambridge.

Yes, I’ve been working for my exams, but now it's only insofar as I enjoy studying the past. There’s a very real possibility that I’m going to walk into a couple of my exams without having an awful lot to say, but that’s because my study is not a means to an end. I’m going to learn about the Jacobite uprisings because they’re interesting, not because it will get me a 2:1 (which, funnily enough, I don’t think it will – Jacobites haven’t appeared on any past paper that I’ve seen. Oops.)

I’ve been considering this position for a couple of weeks now, but this is the first time that I’ve properly attempted to articulate it. I don’t care about my exams, but the root cause of this is not apathy, rather a kind of transcendence whereby I can no longer justify psychological investment in fifteen hours of on-the-spot essay writing.

Now I just need to find a way to let my DoS know…  

The Boat Race

Disclaimer: this is just my interpretation of the whole boat race experience. Everyone else will have experienced/reacted/interpreted it in their own way. I'm also not addressing the question of why we lost for a number of reasons, but mainly because I feel like that's a conversation that ought to be kept within a crew. Also I have high levels of race amnesia so I can't really offer any worthwhile analysis anyway. 

It's really quite simple to describe how it feels to lose a boat race: shit.

The physical pain is taken for granted, my body has become fairly accustomed to feeling like it's been hurled into an inferno and had all the energy sucked out of it. For me, the psychological aspect was so much harder to know how to deal with. It's not exactly the 'pain of defeat', but the confusion and despair that came with that defeat. The sense of shock as I realised that I couldn't remember the race itself, and the inability to connect the incredible feeling of confidence that I had in the hours leading up to the race to the situation that I found myself in, 2000m later. 

It's a terrible cliche that losing is one of the hardest and most valuable ways to learn something about yourself. Before, I had assumed that this was just one of those things that losers say to make themselves feel better, 'you might have won the competition, but I came away with a deeper insight into my soul and a higher philosophical understanding of the nature of humanity, so who's the real loser now?'. From my experience, I'd say there's probably a bit more to it than that. 

Losing made me realise that the very act of racing is, in itself, a great privilege. It's one daring act of throwing everything out there with a high risk that you're not going to make it. It's extraordinary, exhilarating and exciting. I suppose it's quite similar to gambling for large amounts of money, only you end up with better abs and less chance of getting on the wrong side of an instant loans company... 

The Boat Race is 'just a race', in the same way that A-levels are 'just exams', or a degree  is 'just a piece of paper'. When you've invested that much time and effort into something, no matter what, it becomes of paramount importance, but when all that falls away you have to examine everything you're left with, and you realise that the whole process was about so much more than one race, and that your life is about so much more than this one process. It's always rather strange when your perspective changes. I've learnt that it's possible to become so psychologically invested in one particular outcome that it becomes inconceivable that anything else should happen - yet when that 'something else' happens, it's also possible to bounce back up with a deeper appreciation for all the other things in your life. Failure is no longer something to be scared of.  

I'm not trying to suggest that winning wouldn't also be a valuable experience. In fact, I'm convinced that winning would be utterly incredible and would result in at least a month of non-stop happiness. This hypothesis currently stands untested, so there's only one thing for it: I'm going to have to trial again, and I'm going to have to cross that line before Oxford. 

A poem for exam term

Crowded desk, hard wooden chair 

Clutching your last strands of hair

Pens and paper, books and notes

Rereading all the crap you wrote

Wish I'd done more in the vacation 

Could have learnt about taxation

Instead I left it all too late

Why do I procrastinate?

Library stints that last all day

Exams are still three weeks away

Perhaps it's time to have some fun

I'll settle for a low 2.i...