Horrific nocturnal violations, or, exam season flashbacks
I have had a recurring nightmare since 1978; a common one in Ireland. I arrive too late for a crucial Leaving Certificate exam, and this one inexcusable lack of organisation destroys my chances of going to university. For an average student like I was, the one thing that was completely within my control was simply presenting myself in the examination hall with a fist full of biros and a ruler. The rest was in the lap of the gods. As a repeat Leaving Certificate student the gods had already let me down once so I could not afford any cock ups second time around. I sit bolt upright in bed and realise forty-two years have passed and things turned out okay – be still my beating heart…
But of course, as legendary English teacher Tom Harris in Rathmines Tech would put it, I was ‘late for the early bus.’ It should have been a relatively calm journey on the number 16 from Grange Road to the South Circular Road. But no, as the double decker meandered and stalled, stopped and started, huffed and puffed its way, without the superfluity of a bus lane, through what passed as rush-hour traffic in the late nineteen seventies, I felt compelled to leap onto the bus driver’s lap and drive the feckin’ thing myself. Instead, coward that I was, I resorted to silent screaming. The world turned black and white (not so dramatic, as it was pretty grey then anyway); I was that mad woman in a Hitchcock psychological thriller. I tried desperately to keep it together. The full implications of my tardiness were making me dizzy. My being ‘late for the early bus’ was going to waste my year of being a ‘second chance student’, a fact that the plain spoken teachers in Rathmines Tech regularly reminded us of. I was a second chance student, a repeater, and I was late. I got off the bus at the top of the South Circular Road and steeple chased down to the Presbyterian Hall on Adelaide Road; a sobering exam centre. I just made it within seconds of the half hour late limit; otherwise I’d have been turned away - second chance student, repeater, late and now rejected. I sat down in a state of shocked relief – to be honest I was on a bit of a high – and tackled the history paper like an automaton on performance enhancement drugs. Mr. Touhy, the history teacher, was really very good at his job. He had me well prepared and I managed to do a pretty good paper.
My next exam nightmare occurred almost exactly twelve months later at the end of my first year in UCD. I sat under a glass roof in the RDS in Ballsbridge on an unspeakably hot summer’s day feeling increasingly unwell as I tried to make sense of a philosophy paper. I remember it was ethics – a Professor Joan Newman had spent a year jabbering on about ‘finding the good’, her fine efforts frankly wasted on the unsophisticated 1979 model of yours truly. In fairness though, I had enjoyed Dr Brendan Purcell’s lectures on those Greek lads Parmenides and Zeno, Anaximander and Anaximines; those names are hard wired into my brain. It was metaphysics at a very elementary level, I hasten to add. Anyway, I deviate; back to the hothouse in Ballsbridge.
My headache became unbearable and it took something akin to supernatural powers to stop me from projectile vomiting over everyone sitting in front of me. I was too shy and awkward to ask if I could leave the hall, so I sat there, composed myself as much as I could, and struggled through. Weren’t we right eejits in the 1970s, prepared to risk death rather than attract unwanted attention or ‘cause a fuss’? Luckily, on the previous day, myself and my classmate Paula O’Brien got a pile of books from the library, found an empty room, and between us tried to make sense of what was called ‘ethics’. It was a bloody difficult task but we managed to cobble together a rudimentary understanding of the thinking of the major players. This was fortuitous. I now realise that I was experiencing my first migraine episode in that exam hall, but enough of the previous day’s rescue session stuck. I staggered out after the three hours, and the two bus trip home in the heat of the rush hour became my personal Via Dolorosa.
My final last exam nightmare happened two years later. I was back in the RDS hot house and it was one of my final English lit exams. I read the essay titles over and over again and none of them appealed to me. I panicked and sat in disbelieving silence for half an hour. As I looked into the middle distance I resigned myself to autumn repeats. I became very calm. Eventually I picked up the paper again and reread the essay titles; clearly my mindfulness exercise had worked! The essay title that jumped out at me was inviting a discussion about the treatment of time in works of English literature. Yes, of course I could tackle this. Sure didn’t Ulysses all happen in one day? Didn’t time go nowhere in Waiting for Godot? Weren’t The Third Policeman and Pincher Martin about dead men reliving their lives? And in Alice in Wonderland wasn’t time all over the place? I wrote frantically and went home happy.
As I write this I have just finished supervising an exam in a Dublin college. I am fascinated by the candidates’ constant need to rehydrate. When did all this water drinking become so necessary? And just when I thought I had witnessed every possible way of holding a pen I witness yet another ham fisted permutation. Having said that, I am the last person to comment on pen holding technique, as anyone who knows me will attest to. Rambling again…
Here are the statistics so far. On two occasions mobile phones ring; one is mine – morto! It’s a two hour exam. Almost half of the candidates require toilet breaks; it must be all that new- fangled obsession with hydration. As I look around the room it is very clear who has done the work and who has not. Some fellas who have perhaps dossed all year are shuffling in their seats, studying the décor and making more facial grimaces than the orang-utans in Dublin Zoo. The girls are bent over their exam scripts writing furiously. They only put their heads up to ask for another answer booklet. And isn’t it funny the way you always keep having eye-contact with one or two students in an exam hall? Why is that? It starts within the first few minutes and never stops. It becomes more embarrassing with each encounter. God I hate that. Notwithstanding, it’s better supervising exams than sitting them.
© Copyright Berni Dwan 2015
I have had a recurring nightmare since 1978; a common one in Ireland. I arrive too late for a crucial Leaving Certificate exam, and this one inexcusable lack of organisation destroys my chances of going to university. For an average student like I was, the one thing that was completely within my control was simply presenting myself in the examination hall with a fist full of biros and a ruler. The rest was in the lap of the gods. As a repeat Leaving Certificate student the gods had already let me down once so I could not afford any cock ups second time around. I sit bolt upright in bed and realise forty-two years have passed and things turned out okay – be still my beating heart…
But of course, as legendary English teacher Tom Harris in Rathmines Tech would put it, I was ‘late for the early bus.’ It should have been a relatively calm journey on the number 16 from Grange Road to the South Circular Road. But no, as the double decker meandered and stalled, stopped and started, huffed and puffed its way, without the superfluity of a bus lane, through what passed as rush-hour traffic in the late nineteen seventies, I felt compelled to leap onto the bus driver’s lap and drive the feckin’ thing myself. Instead, coward that I was, I resorted to silent screaming. The world turned black and white (not so dramatic, as it was pretty grey then anyway); I was that mad woman in a Hitchcock psychological thriller. I tried desperately to keep it together. The full implications of my tardiness were making me dizzy. My being ‘late for the early bus’ was going to waste my year of being a ‘second chance student’, a fact that the plain spoken teachers in Rathmines Tech regularly reminded us of. I was a second chance student, a repeater, and I was late. I got off the bus at the top of the South Circular Road and steeple chased down to the Presbyterian Hall on Adelaide Road; a sobering exam centre. I just made it within seconds of the half hour late limit; otherwise I’d have been turned away - second chance student, repeater, late and now rejected. I sat down in a state of shocked relief – to be honest I was on a bit of a high – and tackled the history paper like an automaton on performance enhancement drugs. Mr. Touhy, the history teacher, was really very good at his job. He had me well prepared and I managed to do a pretty good paper.
My next exam nightmare occurred almost exactly twelve months later at the end of my first year in UCD. I sat under a glass roof in the RDS in Ballsbridge on an unspeakably hot summer’s day feeling increasingly unwell as I tried to make sense of a philosophy paper. I remember it was ethics – a Professor Joan Newman had spent a year jabbering on about ‘finding the good’, her fine efforts frankly wasted on the unsophisticated 1979 model of yours truly. In fairness though, I had enjoyed Dr Brendan Purcell’s lectures on those Greek lads Parmenides and Zeno, Anaximander and Anaximines; those names are hard wired into my brain. It was metaphysics at a very elementary level, I hasten to add. Anyway, I deviate; back to the hothouse in Ballsbridge.
My headache became unbearable and it took something akin to supernatural powers to stop me from projectile vomiting over everyone sitting in front of me. I was too shy and awkward to ask if I could leave the hall, so I sat there, composed myself as much as I could, and struggled through. Weren’t we right eejits in the 1970s, prepared to risk death rather than attract unwanted attention or ‘cause a fuss’? Luckily, on the previous day, myself and my classmate Paula O’Brien got a pile of books from the library, found an empty room, and between us tried to make sense of what was called ‘ethics’. It was a bloody difficult task but we managed to cobble together a rudimentary understanding of the thinking of the major players. This was fortuitous. I now realise that I was experiencing my first migraine episode in that exam hall, but enough of the previous day’s rescue session stuck. I staggered out after the three hours, and the two bus trip home in the heat of the rush hour became my personal Via Dolorosa.
My final last exam nightmare happened two years later. I was back in the RDS hot house and it was one of my final English lit exams. I read the essay titles over and over again and none of them appealed to me. I panicked and sat in disbelieving silence for half an hour. As I looked into the middle distance I resigned myself to autumn repeats. I became very calm. Eventually I picked up the paper again and reread the essay titles; clearly my mindfulness exercise had worked! The essay title that jumped out at me was inviting a discussion about the treatment of time in works of English literature. Yes, of course I could tackle this. Sure didn’t Ulysses all happen in one day? Didn’t time go nowhere in Waiting for Godot? Weren’t The Third Policeman and Pincher Martin about dead men reliving their lives? And in Alice in Wonderland wasn’t time all over the place? I wrote frantically and went home happy.
As I write this I have just finished supervising an exam in a Dublin college. I am fascinated by the candidates’ constant need to rehydrate. When did all this water drinking become so necessary? And just when I thought I had witnessed every possible way of holding a pen I witness yet another ham fisted permutation. Having said that, I am the last person to comment on pen holding technique, as anyone who knows me will attest to. Rambling again…
Here are the statistics so far. On two occasions mobile phones ring; one is mine – morto! It’s a two hour exam. Almost half of the candidates require toilet breaks; it must be all that new- fangled obsession with hydration. As I look around the room it is very clear who has done the work and who has not. Some fellas who have perhaps dossed all year are shuffling in their seats, studying the décor and making more facial grimaces than the orang-utans in Dublin Zoo. The girls are bent over their exam scripts writing furiously. They only put their heads up to ask for another answer booklet. And isn’t it funny the way you always keep having eye-contact with one or two students in an exam hall? Why is that? It starts within the first few minutes and never stops. It becomes more embarrassing with each encounter. God I hate that. Notwithstanding, it’s better supervising exams than sitting them.
© Copyright Berni Dwan 2015
