The Concentration Curve

You cycle towards the examination hall, not late, but not early either, and you feel the cool wind on your face, and the winter sun on your back. You notice the black long tailed bird in the tree tops (wonder what it's called), the dog sleeping by the drain (while another one tries to hump it), you notice the electric wires and the knots they make, and the Australia shaped cloud in the horizon. And that's because you are not concentrating. You've let yourself go, and your brain is in it's default disengaged state. Each time you glance at your watch, it reminds you that you have an exam awaiting you, but then the main building gate catches your eye, and wonder why they open the way they do, and not open the opposite way...

You reach the examination hall, and a little juice from the adrenal glands is pumped into your body. Your senses spike as you collect the paper, there is that excitement of anticipation. It's interesting how fragile the adrenaline balance is - too much of it and you go blank and freeze, too little, and there is no motivation or intensity. But the perfect amount can put you in the "zone", heighten your senses, make you feel as alive as can be. Near the start though, you have too little of it, the paper seems uninteresting. You gaze out of the window. You look at the misty tree tops, and a waft of sweet aroma tickles your nose. A song bird chirrups in the distance. Oh yeah, the paper. You glance at the watch. The wrist watch - that amazing contraption. It's almost like a crystal ball, which binds the present in it's faint tick-tick. Looking into which snaps you back to reality. 10 minutes past already. Some more adrenaline rushes through. Now you're ready to get to work.



You rush through the initial questions with utter and total focus, your world restricted to the A4 size of the question paper. Any signs of lurking fatigue or boredom get obscured, and the body curls around the wooden desk, the head inclined as the hand scribbles away. The limits of the human body are nowhere near where they pretend to be. You haven't slept in two days and had a throbbing headache. But for that moment, the physical world dissolves into the background, it's just you and that sheet.

And then the guy on your left coughs. That cough which breaks your chain of thought. Or maybe it's the invigilator who does the honors - " I card please?". He has an apologetic look on his face. You suppress your irritation, and feel a little sorry for the guy. Stand all day in examination halls, asking for I cards and trying to weed out cheaters. Not better than a constable's job, without the pay. You rummage through the many stapled pages, and find your name. You sign next to it. The invigilator hastens to collect the sheet from you, and shuffles off. Poor guy.

You look at your watch. Snap. An hour to go, more than an hour's work left. You take a sip of water, take a look around. Your gaze wanders unconsciously to all the pretty girls seated in your range of vision. You muse about how effective your"pretty girl" filter has become - you could probably spot them while hanging upside down in the middle of a fish market. the You notice one to your left. That explains the sweet aroma. She has pretty hair too. "Look into your own paper!" someone shouts from the back. He's shouting at someone else, but he has a point. You take another sip. That's another ten minutes gone.




The adrenaline kicks in again, thank god for that. You rush through the remainder of the questions, without looking up again. Fifteen minutes to the end, and there's one question left. You've solved a similar question the day before, this shouldn't take much time. And then you make that dull mechanical table that every last question inevitably has , and while you do it, you think about what you'll do after the exam. Take a hike, finish that book, watch that movie you never had the time to watch. Then you look up, massage your strained neck. The invigilators seem to be getting restless, like predators gearing up for the kill. They repeatedly tell you how much time is left, and whisper things to each other, strategizing the best method to round up the prey. "Two minutes left !!". Oh damn.

You realize that you made a mistake in the table, and your answer is absurd. So much for "mechanical". You scramble to fix the error, the adrenaline kicking in in earnest. You find it just as the invigilators move in, fangs bared and claws out. You arrive at the answer in that final burst of calculation, just as the once polite and harmless invigilator rushes towards you, a man possessed. You turn in the paper before he does you any bodily harm, and try to get away from the guy. No need for that - he runs off in another direction, thirsty for answer scripts - I wonder if they have some way of turning the answer sheets into equivalent amounts of gold, judging by their desperation to grab a few. Or maybe there is a thriving black market for answer sheets, people probably buy them and use the cheap paper to light fires.

You alight off your perch, scratch your head. Now that was pretty good. Somehow extended periods in the "zone" always fill you with a faint euphoria, an irrational contentment. You walk out of the examination hall, and notice people milling around in the gallery. "What was that? No i didn't get that answer, you screwed up!" your friend smugly tells you. You think about how you could have made the mistake. It was the pretty girls, it's always the pretty girls. And the open window. And that invigilator. The exam room was also not a good one, the seats were low , the desk was too high. You had a headache too, and you hadn't slept the night before. Your pen was not the one you preferred, it was that cheap ballpoint disposable. You look at your watch. Snap. Oh, hell with it. Let's get to that movie.