From the moment I woke up this morning until 7:00 am, I did nothing aside from lying on my bed and trying to sleep again. I found it hard to get up from bed this morning. Maybe because I did not want to go to school today. It was 7:30 when I realized that if I do not stand up at that very moment, I am going to be late and I cannot be late today because I have my practical exams in Chem16 and Chem16 is my first subject. So, I hurried up and went to school.
I had heard a lot of rumours for the past few weeks that the laboratory instructors in Chem16 would give us a hard time in our practical exams. I was thinking for the past few days about what preparations I had to make for the exam. I practiced the basic techniques in the laboratory because I was so nervous that if did not practice I might screw up. My heart carried fear for the past few days. Now, I experienced the peak of my fear because I had to face my exams. When I reached our laboratory room, I was hoping that the exams would be postponed. However, I was unlucky. Our teacher came in and told us to go upstairs because the exams was about to start. "This is it." I told myself. I tried to relax as I entered the room. There were ten tables in the room and each table contained an experiment for us to perform. I was shocked when Mr. See told us that time limit for each table is two minutes. "What? Two minutes?!" I shouted. The exam started. I was in the first table. I couldn't perform well because I was panicking. I was thinking of the two minutes stuff the whole time and I did not notice that the time was up for the first table. I was not able to perform the set-up. I imagined that things would really go bad. I felt so down that time. I reached the sixth table and I kept saying to myself that I need to perform well this time. It was because I did not have a single good performance on one of the previous tables. I was either I did not finish the set-up or there was something wrong I had done in the set-up. I wanted to cry because I knew that I was definitely going to fail and I could not fail this exam. I looked at the sixth table. There was a test tube with a solution inside it. We were supposed to identify the solution by observing. For two minutes, I stared at the solution and tried to figure what it was. The time ended and I came up with no answer. Mr. Sean told us that we were supposed to smell the solution. The solution was actually vinegar. I was so angry at myself. How come it never crossed my mind to smell the solution? Argh. Finally, I was in the last table. My nightmare was about to end. In the last table, we were to pretend that we were mute Chem16 students and pretend that there was a fire inside the laboratory. I acted that I was panicking. After the time limit, I was glad because I thought I did the correct thing. At least I knew that there was one table wherein I did the correct thing. But, I was so wrong. Mr. See explained that the right thing to do was go outside of the laboratory for that table. I was deeply depressed. I didn't know that we were allowed to go out. We went back to the classroom. I heard complaints and rants here and there. Of course, I ranted too on how the time limit was too short, on how the exam was so hard and on other things to complain about. One thing was for sure, I definitely screwed up in this exam.
Perhaps, preparation was not the only thing I needed for this kind of exam. Mastery in the techniques in the laboratory and exploring possibilities maybe the best gear for this exam. How I wished I had those things.
