Exams

It’s that time of the year again... more words of wisdom from Mr John Clarke, AKA Fred Dagg...

I suppose there are some of you out there working up to sitting exams of one sort or another and I’d just like to say that all my sympathies go with you, in fact I even had to sit an exam myself once. I didn’t do particularly well because I had a bit of a headache - the night before I’d been rubbing a bit of brandy into my brain to settle the nerves a bit and I think it might have got away on me.

I thought the questions were very difficult, actually it was a maths exam and I never was very smart with numbers. In fact I wasn’t even supposed to be doing the maths exam, but I’d fronted up on the wrong day and once I was through the door they wouldn’t let me out for a few hours.

The first question was all about calculating the compound interest travelling at the speed of light past three men who took four days to mow a lawn of six acres. Well, as you can understand, I didn’t see the answer leaping off the paper and hitting me between the eyes, so I sat back and delivered my old favourite, an essay on what I did in the holidays. Then I got down on the floor and snuck off home. I got four percent for that exam. They said I’d got the answer wrong, but they gave me a couple of points for my reasoning, which was interesting because when I sat the English exam I wrote the same essay and got three percent.

So it’s really just a matter of luck, so keep at it and try to avoid getting headaches of the kind I mentioned before.