Examination Fever

For most of the year, most of us had been allergic to work; apparently there had been a history of such allergies in the school.

Throughout the spring there had been quite a few cases of ‘Exams are stupid’, which proved highly contagious among friends.

Then in late May, one or two of us suffered a mild attack of ‘Gosh, is it really next month?’ and we seemed to give that to the others rather rapidly. You could tell how it was spreading from improved attendance at lessons.

An even more serious outbreak was that of the very infectious ‘I don’t know a thing’ two weeks before. At about the same time everyone seemed to catch ‘You’re no good!’ from the teachers. Then there was a bout of ‘I don’t really care’ followed by a few chronic cases of ‘My parents will kill me’. This again proved very catching; half the class was down with it in the week leading up to the exam itself, and it had reached epidemic proportions by the Friday before.

By this time, those who had been suffering from ‘It’ll be easy for me’ had made a total recovery.

That Friday there was a ‘What if I’m suffering from amnesia?’ scare,and this had developed by Monday into a touch of ‘I can’t even remembermy own name’.

There were also, of course, the normal isolated cases of ‘My pen doesn’t work’ and several pupils had a sudden fit of ‘Where’s the toilet?’

Afterwards there were a couple of complaints of ‘I know I’ve failed’, but generally the worst seemed to be over. Such diseases are rarely terminal. And after all, we had a convalescence and recuperation period of six and a half weeks to follow.