So, a week in the South of France to revise zoomed past and it didn't ever get to the point where I felt in anyway rested or relaxed. True, if I'd stayed at home to revise I'd have got less done in all probability but the truth is wherever I'd gone to revise I would have ended up looking for ANYTHING to distract me and take me away from the incredible dullness of revision. Is there any real way to make revision fun or even mildly interesting? I will never use another weeks holiday to do this - my holiday is for relaxing and doing what I want....resentful..........moi?
Anyway, I drove back on Sunday leaving The Money Pit at 07:20 and frankly after the nightmare of the journey down i wasn't looking forward to it. But.......it went swimmingly! It took me 9 hours and 4 minutes to cover 657 miles, averaging 74mph for the whole journey, a seriously good average including stops, and I ended up in Dunkerque 3.5 hours early for the boat. The upside of the Eastern Channel crossings is that the boats are far more frequent than from Portsmouth or Plymouth, so I was able to get the 18:00 boat instead of my one booked for 10:00. It looked like I'd be home by 21:30 which is a good 2-3 hours earlier than I'd expected or planned. That is of course until I get to the poxy M25 whereby I immediately hit an hours delay due to an earlier accident. Bummer.
I got in the house at 22:00, shattered and increasingly panicked by the thought of the exam. I desperately tried to do some on the bloody boat even, and after I got in and was (warm;y?) welcomed by HellsBells, Kid and Pie I tried to get another hour or so in. My head hurt the instant i tried to assimilate more information. Is it possible that the brain has a finite storage limit? That's a cognitive architecture argument against the Computational Theory of Mind and a feeble attempt at Philosophical humour.
Guess how much sleep I got? Despite being .........I think the best phrase is fucked...........yep....about an hour because every time I dropped off all my mind kept doing was running exam scenarios through it. Ironic really when the exam was 'Philosophy of the Mind', but an irony lost on me at this point.
09:30 Monday, 30 minutes before the exam. I am sitting in the Hampshire Rose Bowl. All around me are OU students each to a person huddled over last minute scribbled notes cramming in as much last minute knowledge as possible. They ALL look far more intelligent than me. My demeanour masks a physically shattered bodily form, aching joints and muscles combining with overwhelming tiredness to make my inner self a shadow of the outer self. Descartes would have loved the dualistic analogy. But, I'd not given up, merely decided that if I didn't know enough by the time I left my house then I never would. I still think it's intimidating to see loads of people cheerfully revising away and smilingly walking into the exam room. Also intimidating is the fucking bright spark who asks for another answer booklet less than an hour into the exam when you've written about 4 sides at best! Why allow that? Why not just pile a load of answer booklets on each desk and tell students that's their lot?
10:00, Turn your papers over now.................oh shit......
Later, GJ
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