Hatred of Exams, or Fear of Failure

It's been almost a week of my new amazing schedule and already I grow weary of it. They're tiresome to me, revision schedules. Revision is tiresome to me in general. The idea of exams repulse me more and more as the years go by. It's quite worrying considering the fact that I want to continue education for the next 4 years.

Sometimes I want to quit education, or at least take a year out to focus heavily on writing a novel. I wish I could, but it's simply impractical and would not be smiled upon by anybody. I hope to write a lot over the summer, before I begin university (that's if I get in).

Nothing is certain, and that's scary. Unless you're an exam aficionado, a scholarly whizz, the ending months of A2s are quite horrifying. The future is set out before you in a clear and crystal image, but the path before you is indeterminate, not made of solid, not made of gas, not made of liquid, but there. Just a hazy substance, a confused substance. A substance you must traverse across to climb into that crystal image and enter your new life. But you may fall. You may step across the bridge of uncertainty and place a step upon some part that isn't so solid, and fall right through. You never know when you may fall through, and it's anxiety-inducing.

I think I'm vaguely academic, but I'm not great at exams necessarily. I don't enjoy learning set essay structures and I don't like planning. I like going in and just throwing down what I understand of the topic, but that is not the greatest method for passing an exam. But, to me, it feels the most honest, and that's how I do it. Memorising essay structures and answers feels like cheating, not to mention it's obscenely tedious. I prefer working my mind in there, even though that stops me from getting the best grades.

I don't know what I'm doing any more. I love learning and I love education, but I hate exams, and for most of it, exams are inextricable from education.

I just really hope I get into university. I don't want to go through clearing either, I just hope I get my Edinburgh offer. I hope even if I don't do so well, they accept me anyway. There weren't many people at the post-offers open day for Italian, and I've opted for Italian and Philosophy, so perhaps, due to such minimal students choosing Italian, they will give me the place even if my grades don't hit the mark.

I'm relying on idealistic optimism now, which is never good. I think I can get my B (at the least!) in Philosophy, but I'm not sure about Psychology and Spanish. I won't lie: I'm scared. Because I can't tell any more. I just can't tell. The unknown is scary. I can usually prognosticate what I'll get, but not this time. I have no idea. I'm scared.

The typical response everyone will give me, if I were to talk to anyone about this, would be: just work then! Work, work, work, and do your best! And it sounds so simple when you say it like that, but I assure you, it isn't. I wish "work" was just something one could "do" like eating a banana or watching a video, but it's not. I don't know what it is.

Fuck.

Ah well.

We'll see what happens.

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