Last Saturday was my 2nd lab exam on a major subject. I did READ my notes and actually tried to study. The temptation of sleep and TV was too strong for me to resist (spare me the lecture I’m only human). Despite the less study time I was actually sure I could pass the test.
After giving the instructor my paper I heard my lumbar vertebra give a clacking sound, as if I just woke up early in the morning yawning, and stretching every inch of my 5’8 stature. While walking with a couple of friends to unwind I felt a throbbing pain in my temples. The aftermath of an exam, I know. If this was an ordinary exam I could have easily laughed the physical pain away or indulged myself to the carnal pleasures of videoke in g-box or re-affirmed my gluttonous nature. I could have just talked to my friends who also took the exam and compare answers, laugh at my mistakes or blank answers or curse the instructors for being successful in making my day miserable. But on this particular exam I was silent and so were my friends. We just walked aimlessly at the mall with small attempts at a conversation every now and then just to make sure that everybody was still breathing. Just weeks before I received the lowest of the low scores among my major exams, a 16%, though I didn’t feel a thing since there were only two people among hundreds of us who were taking the subject who passed (they got 99% and 80 something % mind you). But this exam was different. I just didn’t know why. By UP pharmaceutical chemistry standards it was like the usual exams, 1 and half hour duration, 100 % no matching type or multiple-choice whatsoever, cover-to-cover physically exhausting and purely intellectual. Half-way of writing a plausible reaction mechanism for a thiamine-catalyzed acyloin condensation of 2 anisole molecules my mind went blank. I asked myself, what I was doing there, in that exact spot in that room on that hour. Of course my mind quickly answered that I was taking an important examination and that I was wasting precious time thinking of irrelevant not to mention silly things, and so I gathered my remaining sanity and went on to answer the rest of the items. The one and a half hour was up too fast, as usual and you see the person next to you either with a blank stare, dishelved hair, or an unusually wrinkled shirt, then you ask yourself why bother to make yourself look and feel miserable when you know that it all amounts to nothing.
Of course I was being too dramatic because of the horror the exam has just given me but when you stop and think about it, it makes sense. Why bother taking an exam when you know that you’re going to fail that subject anyway? I know I sound like one of the boys of Simple Plan with their sad (suicidal) lyrics but there are at least some truth to what I just said. A strong warrior knows when to cry for battle and when to retreat when he knows he is defeated. I was defeated. I was defeated by a 6-page exam. I was defeated by my professors. I was defeated by myself.
The anisole molecule
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