In the Exam Hall

Date : Sometime in the past
Time : 11.30 am.
Event : GCE ‘A’ Level Examinations (Higher School Certificate)
Setting : School Examination Hall

I am sitting at my desk, feverishly working through my last questions in the English literature paper so that I can have enough time to do some last minute checking of the answers before the time is up. I look up at the clock at the front of the hall that stares back at me telling me that I have another half an hour to go before everything comes to a stop and I have to submit my answer papers, incomplete answers and all.

Complete silence around the hall as everyone, else bent over their desks, is doing the same. Suddenly, I could hear the sound of someone getting up from his chair, the hustle of papers being arranged neatly, ready to be handed in to the invigilators. From the corner of my eye, it was the person seated next to me. She had completed her answers ahead of me. She marched up confidently to the invigilators and handed up her papers. As she left the hall, she turned and glanced at me, gave me a wink, and said, ‘See you outside when it’s all over’.

Of course, she is not the only one to be leaving the hall early. Some of the others have long gone for different reasons. Some of them had come into the hall totally unprepared for what was to be an important examination of their school years and had no inkling of what the correct answers to the questions were. Half the time staring blankly at the question papers, scribbled some answers the best they could, doodled with their pencils, erased some of the answers before replacing them with fresh ones, uncertain of whether their latest answer would better than the one they had just deleted. They too left the hall, about three quarters through the exams.

“Time’s Up!” cried the invigilator as the clock struck 12.00 pm. Game over. Some of the other examinees just refused to put down their pencils and tried to put in some finishing touches to their answers, before their answer sheets were swept away by the invigilators. “How much more can they try to do in those two minutes before they had to surrender their papers?’ I thought. ‘tsk, tsk, tsk…”

Life is just about the same isn’t it? We look with envy at those who managed to complete their answers way ahead of time and wonder to ourselves, what did we miss? What did they have, that we lack? Yet in the examinations of our life, when it comes to someone that we treasure deeply leaving so early, it seems so different. We mourn, we pine, we weep. The truth is, they have completed their work and can confidently march out of life’s examination hall, while we who remain are left still struggling to complete the paper. There is nothing more they could have done because they have completed their life’s work.

Of course, there are those that have left early, having left behind unfulfilled lives, unable to complete what they were intended to do. And there are others, who while away their time, while the clock ticks away, only to rush in some last minute answers just before the clock strikes twelve.

I guess for us, we need to put in those answers diligently as best as we can, making the most out of the time we have before the exam is over. Till then, we need to remain focused and re-fire our zest for living and for life’s mission.

MT
21 January 2011