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Diary entry fifty five
 
This is a message to all of the kids at home who are having there exams
right now.
 
A lot of people chuck around pointless, obvious, and stupid exam tips
around. Most of these require both intelligence and effort, so must be
avoided at all costs.
 
It's amazing how many times I've just been flat out
told how to revise, or spent class time to organise my revision. They seemed
to miss the point that I just wasn't planning on ever revising - ever. They
could have spent that time actually teaching me.
 
I'm going to say some potentially unbelievable things in this. They are all
(sadly) true.
 
 I AM this stupid. I'm just blessed with some of the greatest
luck you'll ever find.
 
I've probably sat down and revised for about two hours in my lifetime. 45
minutes of that was in the bath just reading through a psychology textbook
eating a McDonalds. I gave up pretty quickly, so really I should say that
the bath (Although a revision themed bath) was what actually lasted 45
minutes.
 
 If you take that and subtract the amount of time that it takes to
eat a McDonalds meal and to successfully have a bath, then you'll probably
end up with about 10 minutes. And even then I was thinking about eating.
 
The only other time that I tried revising was with my buddy Krishnan where
we sat down in Milton Keynes library and looked through books that didn't
really have any good information. For some reason we decided that we needed
a break, and then never came back to it. We sat around the city centre
eating chicken tortia wraps.
 
I might add, both of these events were for A-levels and nothing else. I
didn't even think about it for GCSE's.
 
GCSE's are one of the biggest jokes of my life. The first biggest joke of my
life is my nose. The amount of pressure that was put on me all through the
however many years of them was astounding. I was surprised I didn't
physically turn into a diamond. I was shouted at so much! told to redo
coursework again and again. Why?
 
I walked into the English exam having not read one of the poems, not having
the book that I needed and came out with an A. STOOPID. You shouldn't be
able to do that. I lost ALL OF MY GRAPHICS COURSEWORK, and then replaced it
with some of the worse work of my life.
 
All I did for GCSE was hand in some AWFUL coursework. So bad that I didn't
change it in some subjects throughout the second year. In fact my sociology
coursework that I didn't even take out of the plastic wallet that it was
handed back to me after the first time, went UP by twelve marks. It went
from a B to a C. All I did was rub the pencilled notes that the teacher put
on it for improvements and handed it back in. I don't know how that worked.
 
I have no idea at all.
 
And, then I showed up to the exams that I did no revision for, having
forgotten any equipment I needed, and somehow I did alright. You should have
seen some of my papers though - they were the worse thing I could have done.
 
I literally did my graphics paper using three coloured pencils, a pen, and
nothing else. The trick there is that I used the coloured pencils as a ruler
to draw straight lines, and by holding it in two places simultaneously I
could draw a perfect circle.
 
Where the hell is the meritocracy in all of it? I know people that work
their arses off preparing for these exams, and later they're some of the
ones crying when the results are given out. I don't get how it works. It
gives me such a bitter taste in my mouth, really. It's like killing a guy
and then moving in with his not-knowing wife. Then you find out that this
guy was a really cool guy, he gave to charity and everything. And turns out
he was your brother.
 
I told Krishnan as we were walking into our lasts exams (We were laughing
going in and coming out of exams no matter how bad we may have done.) that
if I was to get anything higher then a D, which frankly is still too much
for my level of commitment, then the whole system was a joke.
 
BBD
 
Ok, so I got one D - I disserved three.
 
The real key to exams is this:
 
-Don't have hayfeaver. If you have hayfeaver you're already screwed. You
won't sleep well at all the night before, you'll wake up feeling like crap
and spend the exam itself sniffing like crazy. Bring tissues. I actually
blew my nose on my English paper.
 
 I don't know why they time the exams like
this, when about 20% of all students can't concentrate at all.
 
-Be smug. I'm not intelligent at all, you may have guessed by now. But some
people tend to think that I am. I can kind of turn it on and off when I
like. The fact is I know what people want to hear and what they don't want
to hear. And while it may be seemingly more individual of you to try and
stand out to examiners, they have a sea of exam papers doing the same. My
English teacher took me to one side before the exam and said 'Just jump
through the bloody hoops, stop thinking you're above it all.' Or something
to that effect. Ouch.
 
But he was right. I just started actually answering
questions as quickly and bluntly as I could.
 
I became an automatons, soulless creature with no initiative and creativity - but I could fake them both.
-Revise - I know I said that I didn't, but that shouldn't mean anything to
you. I'm an idiot.
 
 I'm a very lucky idiot. If you don't know something
revise it. Don't just revise to say that you've revised though, that kills
all the point of it. Revise what you know you need.
 
The best thing ever that I found was to just find out a very blunt summary of the important things
that you need to know and put it into an A4 piece of paper, then just keep
writing over it again and again to the point where your hand knows it all.
(My hand does it all, I just look at the clock and imagine I'm at home in
the bath again.)
 
 
Anyway, my point to all of this is that you shouldn't worry about the
exams. If you worry you'll probably mess up more. The chances are that
you'll never mess up as much as I have. But that doesn't mean that I don't
want you to revise and stuff - If you want to try and copy what I did you're
an idiot.
 
And these exams have a huge effect on your self esteem and motivation for
the next few years. Don't just take them seriously, actually try to put some
energy into them. That's what I learnt far to late when I finished in school
and I realised that I was an idiot. It kind of hurts to be honest.
 
SOB
 
Or, if it all fails just come to China and train with me for the rest of
your lives. I swear that I'll never ask you about trigonometry, or Weber, or
anything.
 
-Carl Luce.
 
PS: That reminds me. As obsessed with The Catcher in The Rye as I am, it was
in that I got the D. It's weird, if there's one thing in the entire world
that I know, it's that book. D. DDDDDDDDDD. I don't get it. School was
stupid. This was just about exams - don't get me started on schools in
general.
 
And if anyone  has any questions about this please ask. Although so far I
seem to just mess up kids lives with my amazing and contagious apathy. I
don't want any of you to think that you can just breeze though this, because
it'll be my fault if you fail. Just don't get as wound up about it all as
the teachers will be telling you to be. You're kids, save stress for the
adults and their mortgages.
 
Mortgage - The gauge of how dead you are.
 

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