Exam Fever

Endless Cups of Chai ,Brain freeze, Alvida , your'e beautiful , Kela Diet , coffee Shots , Kaun Banega Gadha and How to wake up a Beached Whale.

This was the original title of this post , but I had to replace it with something that connected everything in this chaos.So We now have two words "Exam Fever"

This post is quite lengthy , and divided into chapters that do not necessarily relate to each others.So read any chapter that you might fancy , in any order.


Education:
Cramming is the art perfected by every young adult who doesn't want to mix his studies with his education.
Cramming is not for true believers of institutionalized education.These true believers truly believe that institutional education will tuly liberate them and they will be redeemed in the near future.WAKE UP ! You are waiting for a christmas that will never come.

The only way out for the rest of us lies in gorging obscenely huge amounts of information a night before the exams and then regurgitation in onto the answer sheets in the most aesthetic and presentable manner.(much like an anaconda spitting out a capybara)

Brain Freeze :

Gobbledygook-Incomprehensible or pompous jargon of specialists.

Eg. "When a navigator observes the altitude of the true sun and notes the time , there is an anomaly that creeps in the observation .The True Sun is keeping the Apparent Time and the time observed is that of Mean Solar Time.The connection between Mean Solar Time and the Apparent Solar Time is the Equation of Time which is defined as the excess of Mean Time over Apparent Time or Local Hour Angle Mean Sun ~ Local Hour Angle True Sun."

Brain Freeze is real.It happens to the best of us.Its two in the morning and you are cursing everyone in this universe because you just read gobbledygook and your brain just froze refusing to reboot again.

Exam Fever:

Exam Fever hit us pretty badly a week before exams.With about 12 subjects to study and 6 papers to give , we felt like we were hit below the belt , on the sweet spot , where it hurts the most.WE did have different coping mechanisms.My roomie stopped everything-I mean everything including sleeping and that occasional bathing , except eating and shitting (again very irregular) and parked his ass on the chair with a huge pile of textbooks he had never opened , and for the next one week we hardly saw him move out of the chair.My other roommates had other coping mechanisms.They simply refused to see that exams were in a week.They slept for 12 hours straight on two days and hardly studied in between them.I had my own coping mechanism , which we will discuss in the next chapter.

You're Beautiful , Alvida :
Exam Fever hits you badly if you are still in your sense.The sheer amount of information that you have to cram in that tiny noggin of yours ...mind boggling .Rules and Regulations , international treaties and pacts and 18 books of codes , meteorology , seamanship , electronic navigating equipment , principles an practical navigation , chart-work , the physics of ship stability and safety and naval architecture and the theory and practice of cargo loading and discharging , amendments to regulations , a ton of appendices and annexes...the list goes on.

And I start singing "You're Beautiful , your'e beautiful , its true .I saw your face ...and I don't know what to do , cause i'LL NEVER BE WITH YOU ".
Its like an involuntary tic , a spasm out of control...like tourette's syndrome ...more like verbal Diarrhoea. I start singing "You're Beautiful " like James Blunt .
Bluntly put , My roomies hate my rendition and also the original version of the song.

"Alvida , alvidaa-aa-ahh ab kehna aur kya , jab tune keh diya , alviadaaa-aaah " I start hollering again out of control.My roomies are partially relieved .I sound More like KK (the Alvida singer ) than James Blunt.

Endless Cups Of Chai , Coffee Shots and Kela Diet :

Exam fever.I now realize how it changed me.I'm not much of a coffee drinker or a tea drinker.It makes me Uchal-Khood ( hindi ) all day.I'm too sensitive , I guess .A spike of caffeine makes me jittery , jumpy , nervous and shaky all day and of course there is that teensy weensie problem of insomnia .So No coffee /tea for me .

But come exams , things had to change.When you want to be alert and read all day , then you have stimulants that are legally available and are somewhat cheaper.Thus we had our endless Cups of Chai(tea).
Cutting Chai , or half a cup of chai is synonymous with all stragglers-students ,struggling artists , the unemployed etc. We are not privileged enough to buy a mug of Mocha Latte Grande from the nearest Coffee Day or Barista's because it is too expensive.

Occasionally , one wants to be extra alert.Then we have Coffee Shots.The difference between cutting Chai and Coffee Shots is that coffee shots are had in the same way one has a tequila shots (except the lemon and the salt bit).
From zero to sixty in 5 seconds .Thats how you feel after coffee shot.The trick is to cool the coffee down considerably that it does not scald your buccal cavity.You should be fine once you get a hang of it.

And some days we don't have enough time to go out and eat.We are not gifted with any culinary skills .We can barely manage to boil water. So when there is no time , we bring on the Kela Diet.It is a proven weight-loss diet.
One buys a dozen bananas and then eats one every half an hour and nothing else..This will keep his blood sugar levels normal (bananas are complex carbohydrates and take more time to digest and hence result in a uniform release of sugars into the blood stream).
Kela diet proved helpful to many of my roomies who were eternally constipated . (Kela (Hindi ) = Banana )

How to wake up a Beached whale :

One question has always bothered me.How does one wake up a beached whale? Especially the kind that wants to be in status quo of suspended animation.
I have tried shouting at it ."Wake up , you have overslept .It is time to leave.The exams start in fifteen minutes ! ", But it is mostly ineffective as the beached whale shields itself with a pillow against my acoustic assault.
I've tried gently prodding it , calling its name out aloud , but then again I get distracted by the hypnotic blubber gently undulating in waveforms , while the whale slumbers on.
I've tried water, but as you know , water does not work on beached whales.

My technique is a composite one.It takes some time and a lot of effort, but believe me , it works.
You have to warn the whale of the dire consequences of failure in the exams and then entice it with the aroma of freshly fried greasy samosas and pakoras.And for fun , you could still prod the whale and watch as the blubber gently undulates.

Kaun Banega Gadha (Who wants to be a donkey )

One exam Left.two unnecessary days of holidays for it.We have lost our sense of urgency and desperation.Procastination sets in.
"We'll study later " we are blase " There are two more days" we are stupid.
Now less than twelve hours left to go.We haven't studied a bit.

Call it human tendency or the fickleness of the mind monkey's wandering attention that we frequently deviated from our course and unnecessarily ventured into deep waters of past , present and future , regaling each other with stories that would have been great for bonding , but not today , not now , because the last exam is less than 12 hours away.
Then one of us came up with a solution.He said , "Okay , if we are to study , we should stop talking to each other , so lets play that game which we played as kids .Lets play Jo bolega woh Gadha" (whoever speaks first is an ass ! )

Thus the game began and we quietened down , Being new to the game , a few giggled like girls at this ridiculous yet effective arrangement to maintain silence .