Examinee (Part II)

I always was a terrible student in some ways. If you were to plot a curve of my academic achievements, my low point was probably the time from high school to university. I remember my grades only too well; in my final year of pre-university education, I was averaging a C and my grades spanned the whole spectrum from A to E.

That's when I went off to the army for a while. My grades were a lot better there, I had a lot more fun, and I learnt a lot.

Then I came back to academic life at the university. Big mistake, in some ways. I had always been a 'humanities person' as some people might put it. Quixotically, I opted for a career in the sciences — mathematics, chemistry, computing, that kind of stuff. Big, big mistake. The low point was the second year, in which I did well at chemistry, flunked math, and deliberately failed computing (the story is told elsewhere) before provisionally passing the latter two subjects after re-examinations.

The high point that year was getting 99.5 for the chemistry practical exam. Heh. It was what propelled me into a final-year course in pure and applied chemistry, what some other people might call a double major. This was fun. I think we had 18 hours of practicals a week, maybe 15. I enjoyed everything except the examinations, which were held in a cavernous room with the thermostat set to 'ultra cold'. The other fun bit was taking the Human Resource Management examinations. Too easy.

I got slack, and after a stint as a research technologist, it was off to the local Institute of Education for postgraduate studies. Examinations could only get better! Or so I thought.