Squareface @ 31°North

I just sat for my final paper in university, possibly the very last one of my life. It was for my Shakespeare elective. Everyone left the exam room complaining about it, because the final mini-essay question was not in the text at all, nor did he give us any clue that he’d drop such a bomb. We studied excerpts from 9 plays: The Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Henry IV, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Tempest, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. But the critical exam question was on The Merchant of Venice! O, judge o you Gods, what fools he makes of us.

In spite of that, I’m very pleased. This university life is over. OVER! 

Since nostalgia hasn’t kicked in, let me say all this now. I’m so glad I don’t have to sit in those toilet-stenched classrooms with creaky fold-down wooden chairs paired with completely vandalized wooden chipped off tables anymore letting voices of boredom weave in and out of my semi-wakefulness, resting on my one too many photocopied copyright breached textbooks distributed at almost no cost. I’m even more elated at the fact that I don’t have to write on A3 brown thinner-than-toilet-paper exam answer sheets while witnessing how students are referring to small pieces of paper in their pencilcases, underneath skirts, or under caps. Or more recently, students leaving the classroom for the bathroom and miraculously filling up their papers with the right answers after they return.

I wish I could say I’m also done with the administration people in my university, but alas, I still need them in order to graduate.

Peace, ho! Studies and exams, I bid thee farewell.