pencils, eraser and calculator at right angles. I thought, Mark is right, he is boring. Terribly, terribly boring. The thought pleased me.
‘Did you notice that Spanish girl wasn’t with him today? No good-luck kisses?’
I had noticed.
‘She’s probably got exams now too,’ I said. I took out my clear pencil case.
‘What do you think they’d do if we failed though?’ Kendall whispered. ‘What do you think they’d …’
Kendall’s voice trailed off. I looked at him squarely. He had a soft face: squashy nose, thick lips, ears with long lobes, a round schoolboy haircut. He was sweating and he looked unwell, with a yellow tinge to his face. I suddenly felt pity for Kendall. I had Jess at least, now. We’d spoken daily since the party; at first I’d called her from the phone box at the end of my parents’ road, and then we’d come up early together to Oxford, excited to be near each other. What did Kendall have?
‘It’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘What’s the worst that can happen? They won’t send us down after one term.’
‘Quiet now!’ said the librarian.
The whispered conversations died away. The second hand of the great ornamental clock swooped around. The minute hand ticked: 9.30 a.m.
‘You may turn over your papers and begin now.’
Jess and I had come back to Oxford just after New Year, almost two weeks before the start of term. It had been her suggestion and I, longing to escape the suffocating environment of my parents’ house, eager to see her again, had agreed enthusiastically. We’d holed ourselves up in her bedroom and worked. It was only ten days of effort, but there was a calm, methodical manner to it that had given me hope.
‘I know nothing,’ I’d said. ‘There’s no way I’ll pass.’
‘First thing,’ she said, ‘what’s the mark scheme?’
We pored over past papers, as I remembered the less bright boys at my school had been forced to do. We worked out where answering a question would gain most marks, which marks could be got most easily.
‘Look at it this way,’ said Jess. ‘You could learn all four topics a bit, and you wouldn’t do as well as if you learned one very thoroughly and skipped the rest. Which is your favourite?’
I had never prepared to fail before.
‘Don’t think of it like that,’ said Jess. ‘You’re doing what needs to be done.’
There’s a sense of mastery that comes in examinations. It’s an experience that is rare in the outside world. The number of questions, the different ways they can be presented: these things are limited, and each can be explored, studied, perfected. No wonder we spend our adult lives feeling we’re simply pretending to know what we’re doing. After sixteen years spent doing exams, where the lessons we’ve received perfectly fit the challenges we’re faced with, our preparation for the unpredictable events of normal life will always seem shoddy and haphazard.
Even in the half-baked way we had planned, there was a kind of mastery in my performance that day. I knew where to go and what to do. I read through the questions, found the one I understood and worked through it calmly. While it continued it was all-engaging. For an hour I lived in the rule of the squared paper, the sinusoid, the curves tending to infinity.
After an hour I looked up. I had been dimly aware of a noise to my right, a fidgeting and sighing. Kendall was still sweating, gnawing at the end of his pencil, sinking toothmarks into the wood. By some instinct he knew I was looking at him and grasped my glance.
Clowning, he rolled his eyes, motioned to the paper, shook his head, let out a theatrical sigh. I felt suddenly irritated by him. Did he think we were the same, he and I? Did he think I was also so hopeless that I had to treat all of this as a joke? I may have let out a little tut, and returned to my paper, looking for the questions on which we’d decided I could score at least half-marks.
But Kendall was harder to ignore now that
‘Did you notice that Spanish girl wasn’t with him today? No good-luck kisses?’
I had noticed.
‘She’s probably got exams now too,’ I said. I took out my clear pencil case.
‘What do you think they’d do if we failed though?’ Kendall whispered. ‘What do you think they’d …’
Kendall’s voice trailed off. I looked at him squarely. He had a soft face: squashy nose, thick lips, ears with long lobes, a round schoolboy haircut. He was sweating and he looked unwell, with a yellow tinge to his face. I suddenly felt pity for Kendall. I had Jess at least, now. We’d spoken daily since the party; at first I’d called her from the phone box at the end of my parents’ road, and then we’d come up early together to Oxford, excited to be near each other. What did Kendall have?
‘It’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘What’s the worst that can happen? They won’t send us down after one term.’
‘Quiet now!’ said the librarian.
The whispered conversations died away. The second hand of the great ornamental clock swooped around. The minute hand ticked: 9.30 a.m.
‘You may turn over your papers and begin now.’
Jess and I had come back to Oxford just after New Year, almost two weeks before the start of term. It had been her suggestion and I, longing to escape the suffocating environment of my parents’ house, eager to see her again, had agreed enthusiastically. We’d holed ourselves up in her bedroom and worked. It was only ten days of effort, but there was a calm, methodical manner to it that had given me hope.
‘I know nothing,’ I’d said. ‘There’s no way I’ll pass.’
‘First thing,’ she said, ‘what’s the mark scheme?’
We pored over past papers, as I remembered the less bright boys at my school had been forced to do. We worked out where answering a question would gain most marks, which marks could be got most easily.
‘Look at it this way,’ said Jess. ‘You could learn all four topics a bit, and you wouldn’t do as well as if you learned one very thoroughly and skipped the rest. Which is your favourite?’
I had never prepared to fail before.
‘Don’t think of it like that,’ said Jess. ‘You’re doing what needs to be done.’
There’s a sense of mastery that comes in examinations. It’s an experience that is rare in the outside world. The number of questions, the different ways they can be presented: these things are limited, and each can be explored, studied, perfected. No wonder we spend our adult lives feeling we’re simply pretending to know what we’re doing. After sixteen years spent doing exams, where the lessons we’ve received perfectly fit the challenges we’re faced with, our preparation for the unpredictable events of normal life will always seem shoddy and haphazard.
Even in the half-baked way we had planned, there was a kind of mastery in my performance that day. I knew where to go and what to do. I read through the questions, found the one I understood and worked through it calmly. While it continued it was all-engaging. For an hour I lived in the rule of the squared paper, the sinusoid, the curves tending to infinity.
After an hour I looked up. I had been dimly aware of a noise to my right, a fidgeting and sighing. Kendall was still sweating, gnawing at the end of his pencil, sinking toothmarks into the wood. By some instinct he knew I was looking at him and grasped my glance.
Clowning, he rolled his eyes, motioned to the paper, shook his head, let out a theatrical sigh. I felt suddenly irritated by him. Did he think we were the same, he and I? Did he think I was also so hopeless that I had to treat all of this as a joke? I may have let out a little tut, and returned to my paper, looking for the questions on which we’d decided I could score at least half-marks.
But Kendall was harder to ignore now that
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