BIOMENG341: Bioinstrumentation

The 7 Hallmarks of a Spectacularly Disastrous Paper

1. Temporal surge of pseudo-confidence
During the first 10 minutes, you skim through the questions and pleasantly discover that you have successfully spotted a number of questions. You beam with pride (internally) as you mentally calculate all the marks you can grab, albeit rather inaccurately.

2. "Time management"
Even before you've laid your pen on the paper, you start contemplating how early you want to leave the examination room.

3. After-exams Plans
Of course, if you're leaving early, you need to plan where you can go and walk-walk (eg. Queen Street) after examinations.

4. Lack of sleep
Finally, as you begin pouring ink onto the paper, you begin to realize your body is screaming out for more sleep despite the double dose of caffeine and vitamin C. It doesn't help that the reality of your true incompetence is starting to sink in.

5. Verbal diarrhoea on known questions
As if to make up for the multitudinous questions that you have skipped, you decide unwisely to "invest" more time and effort than warranted into questions that you (think you) know.

6. Panic
As time oozes surreptitiously out of the window, the pressure button is officially switched on. Like trapped in a timeless dimension, you are soon enlightened by that dreaded white wall clock that you have less than 30 minutes left even though you still have almost an hour's worth of questions.

As you attempt to quicken your pace, you tragically find out that you've "rationed" the toughest questions for the last.

7. Sense of despair
Like entering a battlefield naked with only a Kleenex tissue as your weapon of choice, you decide that you are better off waving that piece of tissue, than trying to smother your opponents.

JIALAK. SI LIAO LAH.