Exams time. First exams in uni. On various notice boards were displayed the exams timetable with the various venues. Something new to freshers like me.

The key challenge was locating these venues. To avoid missing a paper due to the difficult of finding the venue, I noted the dates and venues for each paper and went looking for them in advance. Had to familiarize myself with the discovered venues, making key notes on where to find them.

The other difficult task was keeping in mind the course code and titles to be written on question papers. Soon, I learnt this information was already on the question paper and needn’t be memorized. Some exam rules were similar to those we lived with in high school so they were no strangers.

What was different about uni exams was the air of strictness. No turning, no hissing, no team work. Each student was a lone fighter who must turn his or her back on close friends till the battle was over.

One by one we wrote our papers. My first shock had to do with the days on which some of the papers were written: Saturdays and Sundays. One had to remember so much in so little time.

Some papers, my palms were sweaty and shivering. But confidence grew with the passing days. Some papers were very tough. The lecturers give the impression of ease in the classroom whereas the exams questions were not at all smiling, not at all in the mood for pleasantries.

And yet, we survived. The first semester exams were over.
The results came many weeks later. I celebrated every A I made like a newly born baby, buying myself a drink and some popcorn and dancing my heart out. There were three As out of five courses, a B and a C in a course I had no hope of passing, Academic Writing.

Taking Academic Writing exams felt like a 60kg bag of cement on the neck of a five-year old. A miracle I came out if that paper with my sanity intact.

Surviving we did survive, thanks to God Almighty.

I sat myself down, took note of all the things I did right and the results on my transcript and wrote down what I could do better next semester.