Exam-Bam!

Midterm time - the long-dreaded school exam. No six hour exam where you get the time to take some notes, plan out what to write - or even think! No, this is a 1-hour-and-20-minutes-exam where you write all you know, ever knew, you think you know and should know down as fast as you possibly can.

We stayed up most of the night reading.. Drinking coffee..

Early morning. You have to bring your own sheets (called the Blue Book, but it might also be green (?!) ) and pen and that's all you've got. Not even a dictionary (not that you would have the time to even open it) so our exams (talking from the Norwegian point of view) were full of stupid sentence and spelling mistakes..

"Is 'necessary' with one 's' or two? Or even three? Two 'c's? Better use all the possibilities.."

It was a mess.. We all wrote about 9 pages on our little desk (the little ones you pull up that are attached to the chair) and it seems we were the most stressed in the room. Americans are used to this kind of rapid writing, we're too lazy. The girl next to me was busy remodeling her hands by "breaking" each finger over and over while systematically going through her paper. We wrote till our wrists went sore. And then..

..time's up and you don't even remember what you wrote - there is no way you had time to read through it. The whole experience was like speaking in public, when you're done you don't really remember how it went. Oh well, at least you're done.

Leaving, you only had to write your name on the exam. And the professor is far from recognizing each and every one (we are quite a few) so it wouldn't be difficult getting someone else to do the exam for you (like you see in the movies). They don't even check I.D.! I find this very curious. And a bit unnecessary. Necesssary. Neccesary. Nesesary-al-li-ly!