Learning Memoir (Climax Draft)

The sun came up and when 9:30 hit, I rolled out of bed. I was both scared and confident at the same time. It’s a feeling like drinking a combination of chocolate milk and orange juice. It just doesn’t sit well. I arrived at my exam room 10 minutes early. My heartbeat increased more and more with each second moving closer to 10am. Tick, tock, tick, tock. I was watching the clock projected on the screen at the front of the room. When the clock stroke 10am, the teaching assistants passed out the exam. My heart was racing, palms sweating, nerves wracking. I was prepared. I was ready for this. Twelve problems, no big deal. I flipped it over to begin. I panicked instantly. There were four more problems than expected. Why would the teacher do that to me? Alright. Calm down, you’ll be fine I thought.

I made it through the first five problems in 30 minutes. This was very good time, I was on track to finish early. I got to the next problem and froze. Words that looked like a foreign language to me. No problem, just move to the next one and come back later. Another problem that’s foreign. Now it was getting more serious. I’ll just move onto the next one. This became a pattern. A paradox where my mind knew how to do these problems, but on the testing day, I didn’t. The next hour and a half were resembling an exam from hell. I had calmly made it through the first few problems and then suddenly I did not know what I was doing at all. My blood pressure was through the roof until the two hours were over. By the time I turned in my exam, I had pulled enough hair off my head to create a small cat. What on earth just happened to me?

Turning in the exam with so many insufficient answers and blanks was embarrassing. It obviously seemed like I had learned absolutely nothing that semester. It was bad. Really, really bad. I could not get out of my head how awful that time had been. At this point, I was trying to calculate what I would get in the class if I got a 50% on the final. (to be cont.)