The Frustrated Finalist: Fuscing Hell

After nine hours of writing in the past three days you might expect me to have changed my tune from last week and jumped on the ‘waa waa waa woe is me, I have finals’ bandwagon. You’d be right.

I’m only halfway through my punishing schedule of six exams in two weeks but already my back aches, my wrist hurts (from the exams, honest), I have a callous on my hand that rivals anything the river ever inflicted on me, I just slept for a straight twelve hours, my pink carnation’s dead even though I need it twice more and my brain’s so fried I just had to resort to a hackneyed wanking joke.

It’s not a good look and it never will be

The chairs are uncomfortable, the invigilators are annoying and the marquee is so naff it belongs at the Somerville-Jesus Ball.

I hate those smart-arses who think after three years studying carrying their notes right to the door is going to do anything other than make them look like a panicked kid sitting their 11+.

Every time the bloke in charge shouts “you have thirty minutes left” into the microphone it makes me jump and then I have to write the word I’m on again.

I hate the way you have to sit and wait for them to collect your papers because they’ve gone to the vast expense of getting three clearly retired people with nothing better to do to invigilate a room with two hundred people in it.

Misery: and this is before the first exam

I hate anybody who doesn’t know their candidate number (seriously, come on guys), anybody who breathes like Darth Vader doing the hoovering in an otherwise perfectly silent room and I reserve a special level of loathing for anybody who answers the question, “How do you think that went?” with anything other than, “Yeah, it was OK, hopefully a 2.i.”

I hate trashing. After weeks of enforced sobriety I categorically do not want to have to go home and shower for twenty minutes before I can go to the pub. I don’t want to spend painstakingly accrued money I’d reserved for Park End on getting my suit dry cleaned three times.

I don’t want to look like I’ve been paintballing because of the eggs thrown at me, I don’t want to look like I need some Head & Shoulders because even after an apocalyptic shower there’s still flour in my hair and I really really don’t want to have to jump in the river because it’s better than nothing.

The river in fifth week is for Summer Eights, not for bathing

Seriously, the last time I fell in the river I was ill. Very ill. For a period of days. It was distinctly unpleasant for both me and my scout and not an experience I would suggest.

More annoying than trashing itself though are the stupid Proctors’ rules to try and stop it. £80? Are they being serious? Being in OUCA should carry an eighty quid fine, getting flour thrown at you though? There are even past reports of them fining people by tracking them down through facebook.

I hate trashing, but this is police state nonsense. By all means fine the trasher, but the trashee? It’s ridiculous and this whole bloody fortnight is a misery.