THE EXAM ATMOSPHERE

Cue thunderbolt and crash of lightning.
(One day, I will see to it that these special effects take place on the site itself...but that would simply remove the originality of everybody's imagined versions of the special effects. Then you would become a passive reader. And I want you right there in the thick of it...so there. An immediate economic, time and effort save, all under the pretext of conserving originality.)
Exams........exams. We've all been through it...and if not, as with all things involving suffering, there can be no other true empathy than you having been through it yourself.
I choose to write this in the second person merely to increase a sense of community...to deny my insecurities that I am the only person going through this. Not really, but that is precisely the presumptious conclusion I would have expected people to make had I not specifically instructed against it. So now you know. (I'm watching you.) Granted, there may be underlying psychological issues, but you can have on the best of grounds that my use of the second person is purely for dramatic effect. *bored audience member flops off seat with a loud snore* Or some sort of effect anyway.

It's nearly time. The clock ticks closer (NOT LITERALLY...go back! go back! *waves away the man-dressed-as-clock who has been steadily hopping foward with a sinister utterance of 'tick'). You flick through your papers unneccessarily for the umpteenth time, hoping your brain will somehow soak up a flash of information as it whizzes past in the blind panic. Sheets scatter to the floor. You describe this as a 'last straw' while flopping hysterically down to ruffle them uselessly some more. You glare hatred through a mass of electrostatic hair at the casual loiterers who adopt an 'if you don't know it now, it won't go in' stance. Determinedly, you focus on your sheets, pinpoint a word, while flocks of thought spring to mind in quick succession, distracting you with their magnitude of emptiness. You look back up, where relaxed 'I've done all I can' people smugly yawn in perverse contentment. You narrow bloodshot eyes, attempting to pierce all those guilty of preparedness with a special eye laserbeam, secretly hoping it will penetrate their brain and somehow transfer knowledge along some sort of chain of excited electrons located in the (red) light beam. Five minutes wasted. Angrily, you refer back to the scattering of sheets around you, where illegible writing stares blandly back in an 'I'm so uncared for' sort of way. Movement catches your eye as people start to move to the EXAMINATION HALL. Extreme panic sets in, regret and doubt chasing eachother around your already exhausted brain. You join the gathering procession gloomily plodding towards the building. You stare downwards at the baked ground of a (cruelly) sunny day, as you all trek en masse to the (metaphorical) inferno. (Inferno here generally meaning extreme torture...there is, after all, never a guarantee that the hall will not be an icicle parlour. You are kept on tenterhooks by this luck-of-the-draw prospect.) Next comes the panicked quadruple-checking of THE CORRECT WRITING EQUIPMENT. Are 8 pens enough? What happens if they all simultaneously ignite? or explode? or simply refuse to work? A small scramble as everyone exchanges pens and replenishes their own stores. That's not even going into the doubt ascribed to calculator batteries...which you immediately wish you had an entire electronics shop at hand in case of restocking need. As you check equipment again, you feel the flash of panic followed by intense relief as you gaze frantically through your SEE-THROUGH PENCIL CASE, apparently playing a life-or-death game of hide and seek with your stationary. You memorise your seat number, inwardly cursing the amount of brainspace it takes up, while envisaging a conveyor-belt style of information storage. With horror, you imagine the lost piece of information sliding from the other end of a cliff, plunging to its death in the sea of "forgotten", while "Seat number BO8" snuggles down at the forefront of the quivering line of knowledge, unneccessarily safe from harm. You step into the hall, and extreme isolation strikes. The silence is oppresive, and you stumble towards a letter and number like a zombie. You resist the urge to raise your arms in true zombie style, though. After a few minor hiccups of 'going the wrong way' in the aisle and mistakenly ending up in a column of staring students sitting a different exam, you totter over to your seat. A quick alphabetical check informs you you are in the right area, if not in the right seat, while you angrily abuse the "Seat Number BO8" for its lack of sureness. Trains of "Maybe it was "BO7...or E12?" wisp around in your mind while you stare daggers to the front of the hall. And then, blankness sets in. Pure, blissful, lack of thought. You have room only to take note of the amount of tennis balls left in the sports nets around the hall, as you settle into your chair. You join those staring judgementally at the people who wander into the wrong aisle, smug and harshly satisfied now that you have your chair and graffitied desk with you. "It's every man for themselves now...." you silently mutter to the lost person's back, as they scuttle away. At least you have your table.
This gives you great opportunity to criticise all you can. Limited to the table and chair, you tut at the instablity of both, and the disproportionate sizes between them. 'How on EARTH can I pass this exam now?' you exclaim to yourself, wondering how many last straws have managed to classify themselves under that name.
A small, nasal voice permeates the air with unintelligible mutterings about RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE EXAM BOARD, of which only occassional references to "correcting flooo-id" and "even if you do not intend to use it" filter through. Invigilators then use this moment to flock magnetically to the clock, a station which they will refuse to quit unless prised away by a waving arm somewhere at the back of the hall, which, after several minutes of apparent blindness they, disgruntled, feel obliged to attend to the matter (if only to say 'I can't help you'). Lurking around the clock, however, allows them utmost whispering opportunity, also permitting them to stand gloomily at the front, large coats and shawls draped over themselves like a frozen fashion show so that students are left in no doubt as to the torture the invigilators must silently submit to. When the exam starts, after the momentary flurry of paper, silence seems to (impossibly) increase and expand, disturbed only by the nervous cough and whirring of brains that seem to be traversing the hall in a ripple. After a few coughs of your own, you become aware of the unproportionate amount of 'silence' you are seeping up, and so try to limit your own coughing needs, wishing you hadn't used up your 'allowance' so carelessly at the start. This then leads to bitterness towards those who are exceedingly liberal with their silence-disturbance (exams really do bring out the best in you). Those invigilators that are brave enough, who feel strong enough to leave the comfort of the clock (thereby allowing its face to be exposed and actually seen by those taking the exam), commence a funeral-march through the rows. A forwarning of their approach is given by the sinister slow step which echoes behind you, and you can't help but be distracted by the shoe that creaks past with gloomy sureness. Light relief is provided by dancing birds on the roof, who supply interesting rhythmic figures in their tap dancing, mocking your confinement. This inevitably draws the attention of most in the room, and heads flick up on a continual basis. You become distracted and convinced by the idea that dinosaurs are trying to get in. A moment of extreme tension arises when the heater is turned on or off. The immediate jarring hum or jarring lack of hum startles you, and you glare about angrily, and roll your eyes. It is at this point that you notice how silence exaggerates your actions. You turn the pages and make your reaction known - a slump in your seat with a sigh as you see a question you don't understand - all in the mistaken assumption that you are alone in the room. Not surrounded by 100 people. You must at all costs not be fooled by the lack of noise. You then focus on one of the unfortunate invigilators, who are now placed strategically about so that they can be equally judged by equal proportions of the room. As time goes on, stress seems to set in as your writing becomes uselessly illegible and you end up juggling your pens across your table as quietly as possible as they roll around. You congratulate yourself on immense ninja skills when you manage to catch a falling pen, which took a bid to freedom at the first moment it could. You scold it with a look, which morphs into an 'oh you are a cheeky one' eye movement before safely returning it in the middle of the barricade of stationary you have set up. Other people are not so fortunate, loud clatters drawing glares and attention from the whole room, everyone silently gazing at an embarrassed student picking up the disgraced item. You quickly check your own items are not in similarly precarious positions. You see time is nearly up, experiencing again stomach-dropping panic, then overwhelming relief in misreading the time. Other students leave first, and you stare both jealously and in annoyance at them, clattering away into the sunshine. The last few moments are filled with stress, as you curse yourself for not having 'managed your time', and your writing reaches new levels of illegibility, and you see yourself scribbling symbols and squiggles you had never thought existed. You are instructed to put your pen down, and you throw it down with a 'can't do anything now' air of finality. The papers are collected in, and rows are dismissed, and like ants people scuttle through the empty rows of desks to the exit. You cause some confusion as you weave an incomprehensible route through the desks, misjudging the room between them and having to change course jerkily to avoid walking into a chair or desk. Nevertheless, you cause a few scrapes of noise in this bizarre navigation, feeling the fear as the desk seems to attach itself to you, holding you back. You tear yourself free and make it to the exit, and with one sigh of relief become a personified smile again for a few moments in the sun. Then panic settles with familiar assurance in forewarning of the need to start revising for the next imminent exam.
Really, exams are a barrel of laughs.
That's if the barrel were being repeatedly poked with poisonous spikes.