…my exam will be open on the Open University website though as this page goes live at 5 a.m. in the UK I’m pretty sure I won’t have started it yet! This year I’m studying Environmental Science (I’m combining it with Biology in an Open degree), and my exam is 40% data analysis (which will hopefully be a cinch, as I love that stuff) and 60% an essay, choosing one question from three. Now, I know I do a lot of writing, but coming up with 1500 words can be tricky – I’ve loved the module, but there are so many concepts/theories/paradigms etc that choosing the right ones, and making a coherent argument, will be the challenge.

Last year, I had two exams of three hours each – once you opened the exam paper you had 180 minutes to get everything done, plus an hour’s grace for uploading everything in case of technical problems. This year, the paper is meant to be doable in 3 hours, but we actually have 24 hours to submit it. I find that a little bit the worst of both worlds – I don’t really want the blooming thing hanging over me until 23.59 tomorrow night, but equally I don’t want to submit substandard work. And it’s open book. Really, it’s all about putting a coherent argument/discussion together, covering as many of the elements of the course as are strictly relevant, and illustrating it with some lovely examples. Simple!

Still, I wouldn’t want it all to be easy, because then what’s the point? If I’m not scratching my head and feeling my brain getting bigger, I might as well not bother. It does occur to me, though, how much we undervalue the things that come easily to us (as I have done with the data analysis bit of the paper). Sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with celebrating the joy of doing something well that is entirely within our comfort zone, be it knitting a jumper, or making a cake, or being a good partner or a good friend. And it’s also about recognising that things that seem easy often aren’t. On the subject of which, I love this. See what you think.

The Exam
BY JOYCE SUTPHEN

It is mid-October. The trees are in
their autumnal glory (red, yellow-green,

orange) outside the classroom where students
take the mid-term, sniffling softly as if

identifying lines from Blake or Keats
was such sweet sorrow, summoned up in words

they never saw before. I am thinking
of my parents, of the six decades they’ve

been together, of the thirty thousand
meals they’ve eaten in the kitchen, of the

more than twenty thousand nights they’ve slept
under the same roof. I am wondering

who could have fashioned the test that would have
predicted this success? Who could have known?