I played a drinking game in my exam and it was a terrible idea

Library drinking games. Lecture drinking games. It seems like anything students have to do can (and will) be livened up by alcohol consumption.

So how about exams?

Driven half mad by revision and dreaming of summer, I decided to bring drinking games to the exam hall.

This is a really, really, really good idea

The Rules

1. One finger for every cough
2. Two fingers for every cough someone chains after it
3. Finger for every five seconds an invigilator spends peering over you
4. Finger every time you hit a question you didn’t revise for
5. Finger every time your mind goes completely blank
6. Finger for every bit of table graffiti that makes you laugh

Simple, right?

Now, I’m doing a STEM subject, which means I have hopes and dreams and aspirations. Thankfully, I also know a liberal arts fresher, Gareth, without any of those restrictions, so he decided to take the exam drinking game for me. This is his tale.

Tonic water is technically water right?

“The exam rules dictate the only drink you can bring into the exam hall is water, so clearly, whiskey and wine were off the table. It was gin or vodka, then, so obviously gin. I watered it down with some flat tonic water as I didn’t want anything to trigger the invigilator’s bloodhound-like sense of smell and get me a bollocking. But it was still pretty potent.

“Things started off slow, with only one drink in the first five minutes when someone coughed but no-one chained. An invigilator set up camp behind me for three drinks shortly after, and I’m sure they must’ve smelt something. Presumably they figured it was their imagination, because who would have gin in their exam, really?

“A multi-man coughing spree around halfway through left the bottle a third full, and a string of questions I’d completely overlooked in revision all but polished it off. I was starting to feel worse for wear and concentrated all my efforts on not chundering, which would likely be difficult to explain.

“To the examiner who has to read my barely-legible half-a-page-long scrawl about Terminator, I’m so very sorry. I don’t even know where it all came from.”

This is DEFINITELY a really, really, really good idea

“I finished the paper with around 15 minutes to spare so took my by-now almost finished bottle and bailed. A stumbly walk home in the middle of the day and it was done – probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Roll on the exam results in July.”