By Adasinachi Odenigbo
“Stop,” yelled the invigilator. “The exam is over.” All that came to my mind at that moment was repeating Year 6 and walking through the labyrinth of corridors with a sulky look on Monday morning.
As I left the hall into the waiting room, I could hear my mom’s sweet call which made me a bit nervous because I didn’t know what to say to her. When I got some confidence, I stepped forward with a gloomy look still on my face. My mom was about to open her mouth to speak while I trembled with fear. She asked me why I was sad and I had to explain the long story.
It was a hundred questions test timed for an hour and half. At the start of the test, I pleaded for permission to step out of the hall to get water. I calculated that it would take about five minutes to do that. As I was returning, a staff member sent me on an errand to fetch some water for her. Instead of walking briskly and smartly, I forgot all about time and dragged my feet across the pavement. Before coming back, I wanted to see what the restroom looked like so I strolled all the way there.
When I returned, I looked at my watch hoping to have spent seven minutes but it turns out that when you are doing something interesting times just seem to fly; I spent twenty minutes. I’m quite sure that’s why the staff gave me a surly look after I gave her the water.
I sat down, realising I had an hour and ten minutes left to spare. I never paid attention during orientation class so I never knew that easy questions were found at the back of the test script. I continued from the front and was able to tackle thirty difficult questions.
When I gazed back at my watch, I learnt that I had only forty minutes which wasn’t enough time to complete this test. I paused for a sip of water to refresh but my mind told me I should keep that aside and flip to the back. I did and I realised that there were very easy questions I could have tackled in not more than ten minutes.
I felt tears leaving my eyes and I felt very sad and discouraged. I tried to wipe off my tears but as I did that, I mistakenly pushed my pen on to the floor. I tried to search for it but I couldn’t because my contact lenses had expired and I left my glasses at home. I felt for my pen and after a while, I found it and was able to complete twenty questions. Just fifty more questions to be solved in less than ten minutes. I was able to shade in five spaces before I had a minute left.
I was pressed at the moment so I couldn’t think straight. I was able to shade in thirty random answers but I had a feeling that my answers would have been eliminated for someone who was thinking straight. We were given five extra minutes to review our work and I couldn’t think of anything else than to peek into my seatmate’s work. The invigilator was approaching me and I felt an itch down my spine. I knew I could be terribly sanctioned for this action but instead of getting a piece of telling or something even worse, all he did was look at the clock, then at his watch (for confirmation of time), then yell that we should stop and that the test had ended.
I never expected that from him because he looked quiet and kind but just as they say, “Don’t judge a book by the cover.” That’s how every morning, I recite to myself that, “time waits for no one”.
Adasinachi is of Premier International School, Wuse 2, Abuja
