We university students live a life on the battlefield: constantly warring against lecturers, waging skirmishes against armoured assignments, launching bombing runs on enemy quizzes, strafing midterm fire, and assaulting the front lines of lab tests.

And when all that is said and done, the juggernaut-secret weapon of the academic courses-comes out: the final exam. The strongest unit on the pitch, this megaweapon packs enough punch to riddle one’s trenches with bulletholes and slam the fences with projectile fire.

Yes sirree, which is why I have a personal record of my greatest academic battles of all time. And when I say “my greatest”, it doesn’t necessarily mean I won, but what it does mean is that both sides fought the good fight, and that I had to overcome incredible hurdles just to enter the exam hall and make that battle one worth watching.

So for a good viewing, these are the classic battles, with some explanation in parenthesis:

1.) Irving Tan Zhi Mian vs UPSR Science, 2000 (I remember the MCQ’s were tricky, and that the Section B part was crazy, repeatedly asking for manipulated variables in a setup where there seemed to be at least five of them @.@).

2.) Irving Tan Zhi Mian vs PMR Bahasa Melayu, 2003 (WTF WTF WTF. I never understood head or tail of this paper’s comprehension paragraphs, and the tatabahasa component…@.@ Another narrow victory).

3.) Irving Tan Zhi Mian vs Form 1 Kemahiran Hidup, 2001 (I nearly peed in my pants cause I couldn’t answer soooo many of the questions…it beat me. I got a C =.=).

4.) Irving Tan Zhi Mian vs First Ever Additional Mathematics Midterm, 2004 (HAHAHA, RIDICULOUS DEFEAT in this one -I was left staring at the paper for hours, trying to decide if I had somehow walked into the wrong school on my way to class that morning. I still remember my mark…33% heheh @.@).

5.) Irving Tan Zhi Mian vs SPM Additional Mathematics, 2005 (REVENGE IS SWEET. Nuff said XD)

6.) Irving Tan Zhi Mian vs SPM Biology, 2005 (OMG WTH WTH WTH WTH WTH. To this day I do NOT KNOW how I achieved an A2 in this exam-I started by only getting about 30 of the 50 MCQ’s right in Paper 1, then told the Kementerian some crap about lymphs and parasites in the structure questions of Paper 2, before rounding up the fiasco by suggesting that the rambutans in the Paper 3 experiment had to be soaked in 0.2% sucrose to ascertain their solubility, and then proposing that maybe oil was a stable food component @.@)

And now ladies and gentlemen, you can add the University of Ottawa’s very own PHY 1121 exam to the list. Administered by Professor Zbigniew M. Stadnik, it successfully tormented me for three hours straight this morning =.=

I shall begin describing how tricky this exam was by providing three statements:

1.) It was an OPEN BOOK exam. Yes, get your bloody books out everyone -try to see if they help you @.@

2.) 31 Questions, all MCQ. In THREE hours. And we only got 90 minutes to handle 80 Kemahiran Hidup Questions in Form 1 @.@

3.) Sample question: Three solid, homogenous spheres are on identical inclined planes. One of them, A, is a lead ball of mass 5M and radius R, another, B, is a wooden ball of mass M and radius R, while the third one, C, is a wooden ball of mass 3M and radius 2R. If there are no frictional losses, which of the following statements correctly relates the translational speeds at the bottom of the inclined planes?

A-Va=Vb=Vc

B-Va>Vb; Va>Vc

C-Va<Vc; Vb<Vc

D-Va<Vb; Vb<Vc

E-Va=Vb; Vb<Vc

@.@

Contact me if you want to know the answer. God, I think I have never fought so bloody HARD against an exam before >.< It was a solid three hours of insane thinking and scribbling. I remember frantically shuffling notes, scribbling down answers, biting my lip in despair when my derived equation did not provide for the answer I needed. OMG the pain!!! @.@ I do not recall being SO determined to not let an exam get the best of me; I had a 38% from my coursework going into the exam, the latter of which had a weight of 56%; I’ll be honest, I had prayed SOOOO hard the night before that I would somehow succeed to get a mere C and just pass the course =’(

Again I repeat: 56% of your final mark in 31 questions? Do the math people, and tell me how much each MCQ is worth >.< My strategy for the test was to come in hard and fast, and build up momentum as I went along – because I knew that if my congenital functions started coming in, I stood a fighting chance against the wave of equations that could come my way. I also organized my notes and created a framework of reference, in the hope that it would help build up my momentum of thinking by allowing me quick access to the sample questions and notes that I might need.

It didn’t seem to go so well at first: out of the first ten questions, I couldn’t answer five of them. And of the five I did do, two of them were in fact barely more than educated guesses >.< By the time I reached the end of the paper and began to turn around, I noted that I only had half my OMR sheet filled up @.@

Took the exam for another spin, this time jumping around randomly, solving questions here and there, double-checking the ones I had answered when I felt like it-my strategy had changed from “get all the marks you can” to “solidify the marks you have got” >.<

Once the exam was over, I walked back home and got online. As the Prof had promised, the answer scheme was up: everyone could mark their papers and figure out their final course score. I just wanted to pass with a C-it was all I could desire after failing to adapt to my Physics prof’s teaching style in time=(

I got a 73.3% on the finals -an exam which constitutes 56% of my final mark in the course; I also had another 38% in coursework to be added to this fraction.

Now do the math.

Convert the percentage…

Add them together…

And you get:

79.888…

I actually got an A-…=’)

Yes that emoticon actually happened after I realized what I had managed to do =’D

Truly, this really has been one of my greatest academic battles. Thank you God. Thank You so so so much=’)