Class Contradictions

The last week of every semester is interestingly so different from every other week of every semester that is the week of the exams. It is so very interesting to note the stark contradictions in the way we perceive a class room to be throughout the rest of the semester vis a vis the last day.

Through out the rest of the semester, the place that is also known as a seat is nothing more than a place to rest our backsides on while being able to do what ever we desire to do in class obviously subject to ones own level of interest and attention. However on those 6 fateful days the seat not only brings with it luck both good and bad, the positioning of this seat means so much that at times we even forget that it’s the same seat that spent the last 4 months being weighed down by your backside or that of someone else. We bother about the distance from the window the distance from the fan the distance from the door, and then for some the distance from the other person who has studied for the exam. The seat becomes our world, our domain our little kingdom where you are king the examination your war and your pens and pencils all your knights and bishops.

Similarly the time spent in the classroom during those last 6 days is less than 3 hours everyday compared to the over 6 hours on every other day; it seems like such an eternity, an event, a time that is almost enough to make a person age. The class which forms a major chunk of a normal working day, we get up go to class, come back do whatever there is to do and then go back to class the next morning. During exams every time we visit that classroom it’s a whole new experience, it seems like a totally new battle, a totally different world. Although the time duration between coming out of that room and entering it is slightly over 21 hours it seems like a new feeling all over again, with a new subject, having in the last 21 odd hours unlearnt one and learned another subject being as prepared as the limited time can possibly allow one to be for the new exam on the new day, the class room is to be revisited almost like a six day curse during which the same ritual has to be repeated for 6 days consecutively before the cursed can be free in mind and soul and hostel.