I know I said I wouldn’t update until after exams are done (but I lied and here I am). I feel like giving some sort of warrior speech celebrating a victory after war. But I mean, it’s funny, because I know I didn’t win. But it still felt like a victory when I ran through the house and tore quotes off the wall, when I finally filed my English books away - no longer plaguing my study table. English is over. It’s done. It’s gone. I never have to analyse another book again, memorise a quote, stress about what I think the author is trying to convey. I don’t have to think ‘hmm... I wonder what Shakespeare is trying to tell me here?’ or ‘what metalanguage should I use?’ or ‘don’t forget to write about the images in my argument analysis essay!’ ever again. That’s it. It’s the end. And - it really is crazy.
Crazy because I never have to write a stupid text response, comparative essay or argument analysis essay again. No more mental breakdowns, no more ‘secluded weeping’ and ‘falling down on thresholds’, just calm and quiet and peace.
Walking into that exam, I felt so out of place. A wolf among sheep, an imposter among crewmates. One brain that cannot understand English amidst the intelligence of my cohort. But still, I walked in with a smile, with my chin up, and my eyes shining with faked confidence. I really did. That meditation really helped, I guess. I felt ready to conquer whatever VCAA was about to throw at me, whatever curve ball. Then - section B. Those prompts. Those horrid prompts. I knew they were going to be utterly difficult this year, but...
It was okay, though. I didn’t panic. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, forgot that I was in the middle of the exam, and calmed down. Writing started and my hand flew across the page. Write like the wind, I told myself before the exam. And I did.
It was quite unfortaunte that somewhere in the middle of my exam, before I started section B, I started feeling a little weird. My head a little too light, my face a little too hot and a little too red. A twisting knot grew in my stomach. So I sat there, for 15 minutes, in silence, swallowing the pain. Of course I could’ve gone on a toilet break or told a supervisor that I wasn’t feeling too good, but I knew the outcome of that. A horrible derived study score. So I kept going, filling in the empty pages with lines of nonsense - one by one, minute after minute. More and more pages of nothings. Stuff that didn’t make sense, stuff that was irrelevant, stuff that wasn’t backed by evidence. I was too tired, too sick to care. I just kept going, and going, and going.
I did finish the exam, perhaps not with enough time to proofread, but with enough time to take a deep breath, close my eyes and tell myself it would be okay. English wasn’t the end of the world, unless I decided it to be. And in that moment, I decided that it never would be. I have more exams to prove my worth, more opportunities after high school to show people I’m worth more than a study score and more than an ATAR. That VCE English would not stain my declared victory.
It is impossible to escape that dread, though - that I’ll never be enough, that my teacher will look at me with disappointment glimmering in her eyes, that my parents will regard me with that silent, disapproving look of theirs. I promised myself I would not dwell on the possibilities, that I wouldn’t say... ‘but what if?’ and instead accept whatever is given to me. Of course I wanted a 40+, of course I wanted medicine, but can I really? Is it even for me?
At this point, I’m just glad I survived. I’m never looking back at English, because now, ‘there [is] only one way everything [will] go.’ I know that only in time I will come to accept it.
And that’s okay.
EDIT: And with that, I’ll probably be staying far away from atarnotes and other exam discussion spaces to prevent triggering any anxiety and feeling upset about my performance, perhaps popping into the biology question thread but nothing more. I wish everyone luck for their exams. We are so close.