Never Again

I don’t like equations and equations don’t like me. We maintain a comfortable distance at all times to avoid any awkward social situations. We had a pretty long relationship but things ended badly and it’s a bit difficult to claim to study economics and be at war with equations at the same time. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Many of my exams require me to memorise equations. This is something that I neither enjoy nor excel at. So I put it off. I procrastinate until the night before the exam. At night, I tell myself that I must get adequate sleep before the exam and that it’s a good idea to go over the equations in the morning, arguing with myself that my memory has a recency bias. I wake up freakishly early in the morning and procrastinate some more. In the metro, I casually glance through the equations and tell myself that I’m smart enough to work it out, still putting off the actual memorising. As last minute panic grips me before I enter the exam hall, I frantically leaf through my notes, but I tell myself that it’s impossible for me to know what I don’t already know in the next 5 minutes. So I put it off for “some other time.”

During the exam, predictably, I don’t remember the equations. For the ones I think I remember, I can’t correctly derive the results, possibly because I can’t remember all the parameters correctly. As gloom descends upon me I curse the evaluation methodology, the examination pattern, the education system and the universe in general.

After the exam, I tell myself that I’ll do better next time. The bad news is that I lied to myself each time. The good news is I’ve run out of exams. Somehow I don’t feel quite as happy as I thought I would about that. It’s as if there is no point in wasting time anymore.