Exams.

Exams. There is absolutely nothing fun about them. They are the most stressful, scary things and they horribly effect your sleep, diet and general well being. Everyone can relate to how miserable you feel when you have exams and for those of you, like me, who decided to go straight to university will know that after 7 consecutive years of exams you really have had enough of them.

I vowed to be prepared for my finals ... I mean REALLY prepared. I thought I could combine my past experiences to become some super revision machine who was SO prepared for my exams that I could spend the evening before each exam flicking through 'a few past papers' commending myself on just how well prepared I was ... oh boy! I could not have been more wrong about that idea...
No matter how much you try to prepare you are never ready.
Don't get me wrong I did work - I had to! But I still felt that horrible serge of panic as I entered my penultimate revision day and still found myself frantically scanning lectures, discovering new slides I had missed or had previously vowed to 'look back over' ... horrific!
I had six exams, which isn't as many as some and to be fair they were reasonably spread out bar the last few and despite feeling fairly in control at the start of the two week exam period, by the end of it I was a broken human being ... they really do wipe you out! I became some crazed machine that was functioning (efficiently functioning would be a very strong term) on about 5 hours of sleep a night and a diet of cereal, coffee, coffee, coffee and whatever was in the freezer for dinner... despite Mums stern warning to make sure I eat fruit and keep healthy - there was no time for that!
I have been unfortunate enough to have suffered a fair few exam disasters in my time ... I remember once in my first year at university we stayed in catered accommodation and upon leaving the dining hall I trod on a fork, in my flip flops (we had a summer that year, crazy I know). It seemed very minor at the time, no visible injuries, until walking towards the exam hall I looked down at my foot and saw it was gushing with blood. How ridiculous. With no time to spare I limped briskly to the exam hall, accompanied my two of my friends who were doing nothing but pointing and wetting themselves laughing, I rushed to the reception area to seek out a plaster of some kind only to be told to go into the hall and someone would bring one ... so there I was, in my seat, in the middle of a sports hall filled with hundreds of other students, with some poor receptionist knelt down beside me applying a plaster to my gushing foot. I don't know what was more embarrassing; the eager first aid I received in front of all the other students or the fact that, when asked how it had happened, I could only reply 'I trod on a fork'.

So if you take anything from this post, realise that exams are horrible, no matter who you are or what you are doing but no matter what happens, you could always have trod on a fork and sat down with a bleeding foot ... so it really could be worse. (Although I did surprisingly well in that exam it must be said)

I am thankfully free now but for those of you still going - good luck and watch out for cutlery! x