Exams

The title is self explanatory. Exams. Why do they have exams anyways? Is it even legal to have strenuous tests which bisects students according to their intellectual ability? I don't know if it should be done away with.

I looked around, people were scribbling away rapidly onto their answer booklets like as if they were trying to vomit out all the facts that they had carefully crammed into their minds. I looked at my answer sheet, it was blank. Panic started seeping in, and I somehow became a person who was stuck in an air-tight container and there was water trickling in. The person was doomed if he didn't get out of that container and I was doomed if I would not start writing now. 

I bit my lips and looked at the clock, it was 8.10am. I had wasted 10 minutes simply just figuring out what to write. I had studied everything yesterday! Why couldn't I remember anything? I saw the first question, shit! I had just revised this! What was the first line to this answer? If only I could get some cue as to what the first line was, I could successfully complete the entire answer. But how? And then a song started playing in my head. Wasn't this song the exact song which was playing when I had studied this answer? YES! I remember! I quickly started writing down my answer as the information started gushing in. 

After I was done with the paper, I thought to myself- why? Why do people blank out like this? It's so petrifying. I don't know why I thought to blog this, but I had to. Because as I was writing my exam I could only remember songs and useless jibber-jabber popping into my head. 

Well, not everything was nonsensical. There was some stuff that made sense. Like how I had an argument with someone the previous night or how I wanted to solve a problem and it kept on bothering me. We are so preoccupied with our thoughts that even as we sit to write what might be the most important exam of our lives, we think about our problems along with our answers. 

We worry about our futures as we try to recall the sequence of the lines. We reply songs in our head while our hands move to the rhythm of our answers. We think about that movie that we watched while deciding which question to attempt. We think about the plans we will make after exams as we hand in the papers of our first exam. 

Why are we human beings so divided when it comes to attention? Why can't we only focus on one thing and keep the rest of our mind blank? It's not possible. Try thinking of a blank sheet of white paper in your mind for two whole minutes. It's almost impossible! While imagining the paper, you will start thinking about its shape, the pointed edges of the paper, the smoothness it had. Even though it's just a thought, our mind has the power to make things feel real. Why else do you think schizophrenic people "live in another world"? They are trapped in their own mind, a prisoner to their false thoughts. 

We are all slaves to our thoughts, even as I blog this particular post down, I am thinking of a million other things- some of which, I'm not even aware about. Are we our mind or is our mind a part of us? I don't know. 

"TRINGGGGGG!!!!!" The alarm rang. I snapped out of my thoughts. As the realization sunk in, I stared at my blank answer sheet in horror. I had written nothing. It was a plain white sheet of paper lying in front of my while I myself had become a prey to my mind.