Exams

I will be fine. I have revised thoroughly. I am going to give myself a mock exam before the real one. I will pass — but I don't know what grade I'll get.

I'm so worried I won't get a really good grade. Today I have my English Studies exam — almost a guaranteed pass (I need to get less than 2%).

I'm reassured by the fact that I got an A+ for my big assignment on Atonement. Woohoo! That's my first A+ for that paper... I'm really happy. But to be fair, we had to hand in a draft for that assignment, which was critiqued and then given back to us; so without my tutor's comments on my draft I probably wouldn't have got that grade. But an A+ for an assignment worth 30% of our final grade — that's fantastic.

If I'm going to get an A- or higher in any paper, this'll be it. But 40% of the exam is based on The Tempest. I hate Shakespeare. I think plays should be acted out and watched, rather than studied in reading. I loathe having to learn language four centuries old, language that I have to reread twice before I even understand it. And 40% of my exam mark is based on my ability to discuss literary-critical approaches to a text that I don't fully understand the face-value speech of, let alone the literary intricacies!

And I'm worried about the rest of the exam. I've been feeling more and more nauseous when I think about exams, over the last week and a half. I'm so much more nervous about my upcoming exams than usual. I think it might be because I've prepared so much more — I know I'll pass, but I'm so worried my hard work won't pay off in a good grade.

I feel if I don't get good marks, I'll have let down my parents, Dan, myself....

And today's exam is the easy one. I always do badly in history exams, which is going to pull down those lovely two A+s that I got for my medieval England paper; and my classic novels paper I didn't even get good marks in to begin with (well, B+); the exam won't help anything there, either.

And I really haven't revised for either of those exams as much as I should have (much more than usual, but still much less than I should have!). I'm going to have to rely on knowledge accumulated over the semester — something I've never been able to do before.

On the radio they're extolling the virtues of last-minute cramming. I've summarised notes to look over again before the exam, but I'm not cramming. I just hope steady work pays off as well....