Big Mouth: All the exam answers that matter
Violet columnist Kate Collins is back with the only details you actually need to know over the next eight weeks
Hello again! How are you all doing?
And that’s enough small talk. Violet have decided to let me continue my column this term. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps they took a look at their blog and thought, well, hey, this could do with some more raw sex appeal. And Countdown’s Nick Hewer was busy. Who knows? It’s a mystery. But here we are.
“Even an hour relaxing in your room doing nothing does wonders. Those things are important”
This column is the inevitable ‘exam term column’ – something I’m going to get out of the way so we can get onto all the other much more fun, enriching and educational topics I have lined up for you for the next eight weeks. This column is the overture to the buffet of fantastic that will be the rest of the columns, much in the same way your exams are an overture to the buffet of fantastic that will be the rest of your life (would you look at that segue? That was beautiful). So now, having used up 158 of my allotted 700 words at the end of the last sentence, I’m going to address the dreaded issue of exams, Q&A-style.
Q: I’M NERVOUS ABOUT MY EXAMS, WHAT DO I DO?
A: Look after yourself. Take deep breaths. Prepare. Don’t keep it to yourself. Crucially, keep other things going on. Keep seeing friends, partners, watching or making theatre, dancing, singing or exercising or whatever else it is you use to make yourself feel more human. Even an hour relaxing in your room doing nothing does wonders. Those things are important.
Q: WHAT IF I FAIL?
A: A wise person once told me that the only way you can fail is by not trying. And honestly? That’s pretty shit advice and isn’t comforting in any way, shape, or form, so I’m going to say this: it would suck. It would. Failing sucks. But you’d get over it. By the time you’re 80, having done more than a few brilliant things with your tiny space of time to amble blindly and uncomfortably through planet Earth, you almost certainly won’t be bothered about what you got in these exams. You may even have a speedboat. Focus on that.
Q: WHAT IF I LET DOWN [PERSON SIGNIFICANT IN YOUR LIFE]?
“The mark you get in your exam is nothing to do with anyone but you”
A: If anyone ever makes you feel like your attainment in an exam is ‘letting them down,’ – that’s parents, grandparents, guardians, tutors and supervisors included – I would kindly ask you to disregard their opinion on this matter. Or at least ask them to reconsider their priorities. The mark you get in your exam is nothing to do with anyone but you. If you promised to bring their rings to their wedding and accidentally forgot them, now that would be letting them down. In fact, I’d recommend deliberately forgetting their wedding rings to give them that sense of perspective.
Q: WHAT IF THE UNIVERSITY KICKS ME OUT?
A: If they kick you out, they’ll have me to answer to. Kate Collins versus University of Cambridge, Fight Club-style. In which case, I’ll almost certainly lose and get kicked out, too, and we can start a skiffle band together and tour the Republic of Ireland. If we both get kicked out and this doesn’t happen, you’d definitely be letting me down.
I’d say that’s all the important topics covered. Now, just a small piece of advice. At the end of last term, I had the following conversation with my mum:
Her (out of the blue): They need to take their heads out their arses.
Me (startled and slightly terrified): Um. Who?
Her: You lot. Cambridge students. You all just need to take your heads out your arses. Relax. It’s not the end of the world.
And, as ever, I’m afraid she might be right
