Exam fiascos: what's the worst that could happen?
Months of labouring away over cue cards, revision guides and copious amounts of Red Bull can be sabotaged by an unpredictable disaster.
You can take precautions to keep you ahead of the game, but some crises are unavoidable. And sometimes the smallest issues can be the worst.
Premature end of year celebrations can end in tears. Student Darcy Newmark struggled to hear during her French listening exam because the residue of an end-of-school flour fight was lodged in her ear.
An emergency trip to the doctor was arranged but it was too little too late. Her clogged ear meant she had to wave au revoir to her anticipated A*.
No student factors in getting a highly contagious virus the night before their first GCSE.
Florence Shaul’s face swelled like a chipmunk as she discovered she had picked up mumps. The ordeal that followed was “traumatic”. After phoning the school on her way in, Shaul was forced to sit several exams in isolation and the rest at home.
She achieved seven A*s, two As and a B and lived to tell her tragic tale.
Some medical disaster stories are seasonal – and hay fever is a recurring villain. Student Noah Libson has sat most of his exams with puffy, watering eyes as exam season unhelpfully coincides with allergy season.
Many students enter exam halls armed with tissues, tablets, sprays and eyedrops but still find their noses drip on to the paper and their sneezing annoys everyone around them. The solution isn’t simple: antihistamines can make you drowsy but a foggy head and congested nostrils are distracting.
Some hazards are four-legged, as Seb Rubinstein found out when he fell off a horse in the week before exams.
Most students remember to set alarms the night before an exam. A select few manage to set them for the wrong side of noon.
Rikesh Chotai woke up to a friend’s frantic texts asking him why he was late for an exam. A taxi ride later, Chotai had to sit a history AS exam in 15 minutes.
Carrie Starbuck, managing director of study skills website Learning Performance, says it’s important not to panic in unexpected situations.
Starbuck recommends breathing techniques and calm thoughts, then going straight for the questions with the most marks, and the ones you can answer “efficiently and effectively”.
Emotional upset can throw even the best prepared candidate off course. One of the many victims of teenage heartbreak, Zak Rosenfeld, found he couldn’t concentrate-or care-about exams when his relationship broke up.
Denise Knowles, Relate councillor, says you need to acknowledge that you’ve had bad news, and that it’s going to impact on you on an emotional level. But recognise that it’s not going to last forever.
Starbuck’s advice about managing anxiety is widely ignored by students who prefer a desperate dash to the finishing line and often arrive at the exam hall in a half-crazed state.
Charlotte Feld-Davidovinci tried to “fix” her sleep deprivation with caffeine and ended up all aquiver.
NHS Choices recommends reducing caffeine and screen time, exercising, and avoiding late-night food binges to optimise sleep. All of these are hard at the best of times, and impossible around exams.
Caffeine and study drugs can feel like an easy solution, but buzzing then crashing halfway through an exam can ruin the flow of an essay. Study drugs are thought to be safe with few side effects. But you can be allergic to them and experience dips in concentration as their effect wears off.
The drugs can sharpen focus but they don’t give you access to the Tree of Knowledge; you either know the stuff or you don’t. There are also issues around the ethics of taking a study drug to stay on topic – is it basically cheating? A decent night’s sleep is a much healthier and less controversial way of maximising your alertness.
There are clear dangers in being either under- or over-conscientious. To create an air of excitement and curiosity surrounding his AS English exam, Ben Sewell decided not to read the text, but rely on the shortest of short notes available. A choice he came to regret.
At the other end of the spectrum, student Claudia Rowan answered both essay questions on the text instead of the conventional option of picking one.
What’s the worst thing that’s happened to you during exams? Do you have any advice for this year’s students?