Hello everyone
I have a little.. a little tiny bit of a problem. My first exam of my final ever
Exam season that starts today and I'm not gonna lie, a little bit terrified, a little bit scared. In the words of Beyonce Knowles
Oh, oh, oh, oh no, no no. So welcome. Welcome to the vlog. Roll the funky title sequence before I have a breakdown.
On tonight's program, ladies and gentlemen, we have something that's gonna make you sick
Basically it's a Saturday and my exam should have been two days from now on Monday
But because of this little pandemic that's knocking about, don't know if you've heard of it,
the exams have all been put online and because of like time differences and people having different commitments and not being
not being able to
be available at certain times, they are now 48 hours long
So basically that means that my exam that should have started at 3pm on Monday now ends at 3pm on Monday.
This exam is in my American fiction module
Which if you watched my last video you may know I submitted my essay for that module yesterday
So here's something a little bit... little bit crazy
That essay that I wrote yesterday, which was 2,000 words counts for 30% of this module's final grade. The exam I'm doing today, which is
1,500 words is worth 70 percent of this module's final grade. Make that make sense.
Listen I know I'm an English student; numbers are not my strong point. But even I know: it don't add up! They also
Really really helpfully changed how this exam was going to work eight days ago. Eight days ago; bear in mind that my whole university
Moved online a month and a half ago, like the fact that we have an exam this week isn't a surprise to me
I don't know if the department just forgot. It's a nightmare. I'm living a nightmare
Let me tell you why
Basically, the way this exam would normally have worked is that you had two hours to write two essays on three books
They changed it eight days before the exam. Bearing in mind we've been studying this for a year
To be one essay on two books and I understand what you're thinking -that's less to do so surely that's better
well
The trouble is if you write an essay on two books
Those two books need to be books that you can compare. Because of this new rubric
I basically wouldn't be able to write on this one book that
I've dedicated so much time to and is I'm so passionate about writing on this book
So to cut a long story short, I basically found out eight days ago that most of the research and revision
I'd done to this exam was completely
Nullified it like was irrelevant
and so I had to start researching and revising a brand new book that I don't even have with me because it's at
University and I'm at home, whilst writing another 2000 essay on two different books for the same module. I'm tired just thinking about it
So it's been a stressful week. I can't lie to you
oh and also my two other exams are also this week on completely different things and
I've basically dedicated all my revision time to this first exam because it got totally changed just over a week ago
You know what?
I do feel better for like ranting at the camera and I'm really sorry that you had to endure that but that's that's what's been
Happening to me. So right now basically I should not be vlogging I should be revising for this exam
that I'm not prepared for anymore and I'll catch up with you in a bit
I guess. *Hello editing jack here just a quick disclaimer to say I know, I am so aware that other people are having bigger issues
They've got bigger fish to fry than I do right now
Like this is not the biggest issue in the world at this current time
But equally we're allowed to all be frustrated and stressed at this time
You can tell from these clips that I was just absolutely terrified about this exam and it is a huge deal to me
It's my degree. I was frustrated and scared that all of the hard work that I've put in all of the hours
Weren't going to be reflected in this exam and yeah
I just wanted to add some perspective that this obviously isn't the biggest issue in the whole world, but simultaneously
I think we're all allowed to be upset. So yeah, anyway back to the video.* Time absolutely flies whilst you're panicking
It's now about 15 minutes until the exam starts. I don't know what noise just came out of my mouth
It wasn't a good one
I've been revising away and I kind of do feel ready for this exam because like it is open book
So yeah, it should, it'll be okay. Also, I'm sorry that I started this vlog with a big rant
I think it's just frustrating for everyone involved like it isn't my department's fault
Like it isn't. They're doing the best that they possibly can. I do think this information would've been helpful
Like maybe a month before they gave it to us, but equally this time is totally unprecedented like it's no one's fault
So yeah, we move. So my plan is to try and do the exam when it comes out
And just bang it out as if it was in normal exam conditions. I just can't imagine taking an exam in my house. It feels
Fifty Shades of wrong. I don't know like I never thought I would want to go and sit in one of those torturous exam halls, but
I kind of miss it. Is this Stockholm Syndrome?
I think I worked out that I've been doing exams for seven or eight years now in a row
So I think that I'm just so used to that routine of you know
walking to the exam hall with your
flashcards doing them outside the hall and then when they say you can go in putting it all in your bag and
Sitting there doing the exam and then being done whereas this is a really strange setup
Like it just feels strange, but I'm rambling and the exam starts super soon. So let's go
I've set up my little exam station in the dining room so that I can just lock myself away and
move to a different environment to do the exam because I feel like that will get me in the right headspace rather than just like
Sitting at my desk in my bedroom right next to my bed
I just, that doesn't feel right to me. So I'm gonna do it here
And the thing is I also simultaneously recognize how lucky I am to even be able to do this like everyone's home
Situation is so different and unique to them and I just I just hope everyone's doing okay
But anyway, I am going to get on with it and I'm not actually going to vlog whilst I'm doing the exam
because
I don't wanna get disqualified. Honestly at this point
It might be better just to get disqualified because then at least I'd have an excuse for getting zero, right?
No, no, no, no. No, let's not think about that. Let's just let's do the exam. I guess. I'll see you in a bit
Well, hello, I am one exam lighter
Probably considerably lighter because of all the water that's left through tears in my eyes. I'm joking, I haven't actually cried
yet. I have finished which is
Exciting, the fact I have two more exams this week is less, less exciting. It went
Okay, like I would never ever dare say that an exam went well because we have no idea the questions that were on the paper
I could answer so that's a plus that's always a bonus
Like I don't think I'll have got zero, which is good
but I thought I would basically talk about what the difference is between online exams and how
Very peculiar doing an online exam is. Firstly the exam totally triggered my fight-or-flight response
And I realized that I'm... I wanna flight
I want to fly very far away from here when I get like stressed, anxious, nervous I can feel it like here and
Normally my way of coping with that would be, well in an exam
You can't go anywhere anyway, but if I am doing an essay or something
I like to take myself off to a
Library or a specific place where I can just sit and study and focus. During this exam
I could just get up and walk away from the laptop anytime I got stressed which spoiler alert was quite a lot
So I found myself just like pacing I should have worn a fitbit or something like a fitness tracker because I burned some calories
from all that pacing I did. So yeah I've definitely realized that my fight-or-flight response is
Get me out here. Less I'm a celebrity get me out of here more
I'm a stressed broke student get me out of here now, but eventually I did get the words on the paper
So that's good
The second weird thing is that my family
was there like they're just in the house milling around doing their own thing and I'm doing an exam which just feels
So wrong
but more importantly the dog is around and I was just like any excuse to be distracted from the exam. As soon as I
Heard the dog do anything, I was like, "I will come to you and
Care for you", because every bit of academic assessment I've ever done has always been at uni
or at school or at
college or whatever
so it was weird to be doing it at home because also
You can listen to music. You can have Spotify playing, you can have Harry Styles
You can have your optimal focus lo-fi music playing, whatever you want. Whereas obviously normally in an exam
It would be total silence, but you just can't achieve that when you're at home
Like it's not possible. So that was strange also the fact that you could just snack at any point and when I'm stressed and nervous
I just eat, I just shove everything
in there
So I think I worked my way through a whole pack of
Penguin bars today just because every time I stop to think and my mind wandered I was like, you know
I need? Chocolate. The other thing is the pace is totally different
I think when you're in an exam hall and you're in the zone and you know
That you can only have a specific amount of time
you'll pace the way that your brain works so much quicker and you kind of let perfectionism go out the window a little bit because
you have to get pen to paper, you have to write the words down. Whereas whenever I write an essay on my laptop
I always, like basically the way that I write an essay is I don't move on to the next sentence until the one I'm writing is
Absolutely perfect, which works fine for an essay, but when you're in an exam it doesn't work
so well and I found it hard to... because I had the ideas but
I was letting perfectionism kind of take over and I spent way too long working on each little bit. Also the word count
Oh my god
The word count. In an exam setting you just write as much as you are capable of writing in that allotted time
Whereas they basically had to set a maximum word limit on these exams so we can write up to 1500 words
And actually it's really hard because I've been at university for three years writing academic essays for three years
I'm used to how I write essays and I know the basic structure how many words I would spend on each thing and
Normally the essays that we write are
2,000, 2,500 or 3,000 words and it actually surprised me how much I had to cut out when I could have
500 words less like I actually find it really hard to stick to a word count, especially when you're talking about two books because you can barely
scratch the surface. You have to be so selective about what points you pick but then every time I cut something I was like "Could that have
Been the thing that the examiner or the assessor was like yes
He gets it," so I don't if you can tell but I'm basically brain dead at the moment
I'm relieved this one's done. But now all the fact that the next thing I have to do is the other two exams Oh
Lord especially the third one because the time basically that I'd put aside to revise for that third one
I then have to re revise for this one today. So I lost that time so I'm very very behind on that
Every time I think about it, I get like heart palpitations. It is going to be a
Grim week I need to take that down because I'm already so in here. But yeah one down two to go
My conclusion is- online exams: not my friends
but thank you for tuning into the first part of my
Exam season and I'm gonna vlog the rest of this week as well and put it into a separate vlog
Because I feel like I've rambled a lot today, can you tell I talk a lot when I'm stressed?
Definitely, but thank you so much for watching
If you are also doing online exams
Then I'm with you as a wise Sharpay Evans once said we are all in this together and we're gonna get through it
So I hope this was kind of helpful as an insight into what online exams were like it's one step closer to
The end point and it's gonna be sweet
If you enjoyed watching me suffer
Then you can give this video a thumbs up and subscribe for more from me to check out my next, um
Exam season vlog. But for now, thank you so so much for watching I've been Jack Edwards
I've been a very stressed Jack Edwards so I apologize and I will see you next time
Bye Byeee!
In case I don't see ya good afternoon good evening and good night