I had one night to fear my imminent devastation.
I spent half of my lived life preparing for and taking exams. I excelled in them. They gave me instantaneous satisfaction and self-assurance. From primary school to college, I enjoyed the feeling of triumph after scoring higher than most of my classmates in each exam. Although I was scarcely the top of the class, I was invariably close enough to earn my teachers' favor and my classmates' respect. Through what other convenient means can an ordinary teenager achieve self-confidence, if he does not do well in sports and is not dazzling-looking? Mid-term, final, TOEFL, GRE, bring them on. I was the master of them all.
Not only did my excellence in exams give me confidence, they also let me learn modesty.
Friend: "I heard that you got 2300 in GRE, that's amazing!"
I: "Well, that's just a pleasant accident."
Friend: "How did you get such a high mark in the math final?"
I: "I happened to have reviewed the right problem sets."
This time, of course, should be no different. I have already finished three exams, and I have done well in them. Only the math exam remains, and math is my forte. Time to relax and think of the fun things to do in the summer. Then a classmate comes to me and asks me if I am prepared for the final on the Chinese language.
"You are kidding me, right? I don't remember we have a final on that."
"Hmm, no. The exam is on tomorrow morning."
Panic seizes me. Out of my scrambled memory I retrieve the terrifying truth. I now remember clearly that the teacher has mentioned the final in the class, but I have somehow forgot it altogether. I have not once touched the textbook, nor have I read a single reading assignment. As it is, I owe a reading to three novels, five essays, two monograms, half a dozen proses in ancient Chinese, and scores of poems. I cannot even Xerox all the pages before tomorrow morning, let alone reading and memorizing them. I am going to flunk. My mind goes blank.
This is invariably when I wake up from the dream.
I have had this same dream innumerable times, always at dawn. The scenario is identical: falsely thinking that I have only one more exam to take, I am caught off guard with a second exam. The one exam that I remember is on either math or physics, and the one I forget is always, always on the Chinese language. Details may vary. I may remember the Chinese exam with a friend's reminder, I may walk into the classroom and find that everyone is working on the exam that I am completely unprepared for, or I may remain unaware of the exam until I see a big red zero on my score sheet on the first day of school after the summer holiday.
It was the last semester of college when this dream first invaded, shortly after I had taken what I thought was going to be the last exam in my life. In the beginning, the dream was more lenient, and I was given a week's time to cram for the neglected subject. Like a virus that mutates into more virulent strains, however, the dream increased in malice each time it visited, leaving me less and less time to make up, until it gave me only one evening, not to study, since it would be useless, but to dread my imminent and inevitable failure.
To me, it is no coincidence that the dream came on the heels of my supposedly last exam in life. Until then, doing well in exams had been my primary means of establishing my identity. Sure there were other things too, like having a couple of hobbies. But how else does one demonstrate superiority unequivocally? The exams carry scores, and these numbers can be compared. A tall guy says that he is 6'1, a rich man says that he earns half-million a year, and a basketball player says that he scores 20 points average a game. The height, the earning power, and the sportsmanship can all be measured by numbers. My number was my scores on the exams, and it got me ahead in school. Now I had to adapt to a life without exams, and to search for a new means to measure my success. The dream came, I think, to fill in the void. I might no longer have the exams in life, but at least I could still cherish them in my dreams.
Yet it is not a happy dream -- I flunk in it. It seems to reflect my subconscious and persistent fear of failure in the exams. Excellence in the exams was all I had, and how tenuous was my success. Everything hinged on my performance in an hour or so. It resembles in this sense a game, just one shot, and chance happens to us all.
I spent half of my lived life preparing for and taking exams. I excelled in them. They gave me instantaneous satisfaction and self-assurance. From primary school to college, I enjoyed the feeling of triumph after scoring higher than most of my classmates in each exam. Although I was scarcely the top of the class, I was invariably close enough to earn my teachers' favor and my classmates' respect. Through what other convenient means can an ordinary teenager achieve self-confidence, if he does not do well in sports and is not dazzling-looking? Mid-term, final, TOEFL, GRE, bring them on. I was the master of them all.
Not only did my excellence in exams give me confidence, they also let me learn modesty.
Friend: "I heard that you got 2300 in GRE, that's amazing!"
I: "Well, that's just a pleasant accident."
Friend: "How did you get such a high mark in the math final?"
I: "I happened to have reviewed the right problem sets."
This time, of course, should be no different. I have already finished three exams, and I have done well in them. Only the math exam remains, and math is my forte. Time to relax and think of the fun things to do in the summer. Then a classmate comes to me and asks me if I am prepared for the final on the Chinese language.
"You are kidding me, right? I don't remember we have a final on that."
"Hmm, no. The exam is on tomorrow morning."
Panic seizes me. Out of my scrambled memory I retrieve the terrifying truth. I now remember clearly that the teacher has mentioned the final in the class, but I have somehow forgot it altogether. I have not once touched the textbook, nor have I read a single reading assignment. As it is, I owe a reading to three novels, five essays, two monograms, half a dozen proses in ancient Chinese, and scores of poems. I cannot even Xerox all the pages before tomorrow morning, let alone reading and memorizing them. I am going to flunk. My mind goes blank.
This is invariably when I wake up from the dream.
I have had this same dream innumerable times, always at dawn. The scenario is identical: falsely thinking that I have only one more exam to take, I am caught off guard with a second exam. The one exam that I remember is on either math or physics, and the one I forget is always, always on the Chinese language. Details may vary. I may remember the Chinese exam with a friend's reminder, I may walk into the classroom and find that everyone is working on the exam that I am completely unprepared for, or I may remain unaware of the exam until I see a big red zero on my score sheet on the first day of school after the summer holiday.
It was the last semester of college when this dream first invaded, shortly after I had taken what I thought was going to be the last exam in my life. In the beginning, the dream was more lenient, and I was given a week's time to cram for the neglected subject. Like a virus that mutates into more virulent strains, however, the dream increased in malice each time it visited, leaving me less and less time to make up, until it gave me only one evening, not to study, since it would be useless, but to dread my imminent and inevitable failure.
To me, it is no coincidence that the dream came on the heels of my supposedly last exam in life. Until then, doing well in exams had been my primary means of establishing my identity. Sure there were other things too, like having a couple of hobbies. But how else does one demonstrate superiority unequivocally? The exams carry scores, and these numbers can be compared. A tall guy says that he is 6'1, a rich man says that he earns half-million a year, and a basketball player says that he scores 20 points average a game. The height, the earning power, and the sportsmanship can all be measured by numbers. My number was my scores on the exams, and it got me ahead in school. Now I had to adapt to a life without exams, and to search for a new means to measure my success. The dream came, I think, to fill in the void. I might no longer have the exams in life, but at least I could still cherish them in my dreams.
Yet it is not a happy dream -- I flunk in it. It seems to reflect my subconscious and persistent fear of failure in the exams. Excellence in the exams was all I had, and how tenuous was my success. Everything hinged on my performance in an hour or so. It resembles in this sense a game, just one shot, and chance happens to us all.
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