The Waiting Game

I’m still waiting in vain for my grades
I’m still waiting in vain for my grades

From the very same day I finished my exams My heart kept thinking damn I really hope I haven’t failed a thing ye ‘cause ya know I was trying Since then I started checking grades online waiting to see the sign Don’t come to me saying, they’ll be out just now see I need a time and date somehow

Because I’m still waiting in vain for my grades I’m still waiting in vain for my grades

You see February’s here, and I’m still waiting there March is almost here, and I’m still waiting there ye (Ripped off audaciously from Robert Nestor Marley)

The above lyrics essentially describe my state of being after the last set of exams, in fact it describes how I feel after every set of exams I do. Regardless of how I believe my performance was I always, always want to know exactly how I did, after which I can either disagree completely or be quite happy.
I do know people who are either genuinely disinterested in their exam results, or too scared to look at them until it becomes necessary, and then of course there is my personal group of those who want to know as soon as possible. Of all three groups, I think that I would like to belong to the genuinely disinterested. These types of people are able to go on with their life as though nothing has happened and function like normal healthy beings after they do exams. Sadly I don’t ever think I will be able to gain that type of ‘cool’.
The other two groups of people generally share a few common thought processes. One of these is that they love second guessing their performance. Thoughts of “Maybe I got everything right and didn’t know it” and “maybe I got everything wrong and didn’t know it” generally arise alternately. (When they happen at the same time you should probably seek help of a professional nature). The next thing that starts arriving into these impressionable minds is the second guessing of the marker, i.e. (using a gender neutral he) ”Maybe the marker will have a bad day when she marks my paper”, “Maybe the marker will be having a good day when she marks my paper”, “Maybe my paper will make the marker have a bad day”, “Maybe the marker will be intoxicated when he marks my paper”, “Maybe the marker will know it’s my paper and she secretly hates me”, “Maybe the marker will know it’s my paper and she secretly really rather fancies me”, and they go on and on.
Of course none of this obsessing has any implication on what mark you get, which makes it pretty useless, but doesn’t stop it from happening anyway.
Of course at some point in time, (unless the lecturers go on strike and burn all the papers, scrub all of the computer’s hard drives and kill all people who may have seen any marks to protest lack of tea and coffee making facilities) the marks do get released. Leading to one of several varying emotions:
At the top there are the people who do exceptionally well and expected to – ‘The Happy’
Next we have the people who did exceptionally well and didn’t expect to – ‘The Super totally awesomely overjoyed’
The people who did well but wanted to do better – ‘The happy but slightly bemused’
The people who did ok – ‘The non-perturbed’
The people who did awfully but were pretty much expecting to – ‘The solemn’
The people who thought they did well but did awfully – ‘The downright depressed’
All in all I would say I am in the happy but slightly bemused category, though that probably has something to do with my slightly insane notion that I should excel at all times. Such is life, we live to fight another day in the trenches of this war called university. Hopefully, however, I won’t have to fight this particular war after September.
To all of those who have further years of service to studentkind remaining, I wish you luck, to those of you who have had time added onto your service I commiserate, and to those of you who are one step closer to hanging up your uniform for good, stick to it and to rip off another fairly famous person that some of you may have heard of:

“We shall go on to the end, We shall fight in the lecture theatre, we shall fight against tutorials, we shall fight against exams, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the lab, we shall earn our degrees, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight in Oceana, we shall fight in Jesters, we shall fight on all of London road and in Zorba’s, we shall fight them in Asda; We Shall Never Surrender.”
(Ripped off from some bloke with a cigar and funny hats).