As high school students around the nation began their exams this week, I found in a box the exam papers that I kept from when I did year 12 in 1988.
In an act that some thought akin to violence, I posted scans of them on social media, forcing people to confront the horrors of their time sweating over questions that seemed to decide their fate.
The pink question sheets now mostly serve as evidence that as a 16-year-old, I didn’t have a bloody clue about what I was doing.
The English exam, which was how I spent a pleasant five hours on Monday 7 November 1988, involved choosing a question relating to two core texts that were set.
Our class at Mannum High always did Thomas Hardy, and while I lobbied for a change to Charles Dickens, we ended up reading The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
I know this because in my exam booklet I have underlined the two novels as though I needed to make sure I didn’t accidentally write about George Eliot instead.
And in what must have involved some fancy exam technique, I also circled what I thought were key phrases in the question about power and dignity (apparently, I thought “seem to you” was important).
Alas, I spent so much time doing this I ignored the question below where you had to imagine yourself a character from the novels – something which much better suited my skill set.
At least I was on sturdier ground in the afternoon’s session involving creative writing. One topic was to write a personal narrative looking back at a life-changing moment.
I recall thinking that the poor examiners would be so bored reading about the dull lives of year 12 students that I would instead make up a new life and write from the perspective of the West German ambassador to the UN looking back at the moment he fled East Berlin through a tunnel.
The Berlin Wall was on my mind a bit because I also studied German. My German was, as they say, nicht sehr gut. If I am honest, I peaked in year 8 when the class translated 99 Luftballons.
But as a politics nut I was completely obsessed with the cold war and post-second world war Germany.
So of course when one of the questions in the paper asked to give the main reasons for the building of the Berlin Wall, I ignored it and answered another.
This was a bit of a pattern of mine.
In legal studies that year another student and I researched the history of the Australian constitution and the creation of our governmental system. We went as deep into it as you could, writing much more than was needed.
So, when confronted with the question to “discuss the establishment and operation of the three institutions of government under the Commonwealth Constitution” I of course answered another question on judge-made law that I knew barely anything about.
At least this was not an issue for my physics exam. Such was my knowledge of the subject that it made no difference which questions I answered – I knew nothing about any of them.
I chose physics because the dirty secret was the year 12 exam each year used a series of rotating questions, and so it was an easy one to prepare for.
And then in 1988 they used new questions and I was well and truly stuffed.
“Write an essay about the wave nature of matter”? I could well have answered, “what does it matter if nature likes to wave”, such was my grasp of the subject.
My economics exam is lost to time, as we had to hand in the questions sheet as well. But I did keep my notes and it seems Keynes was involved in some way.
My year 12 exams were not the worst I ever experienced – try an honours microeconomics exam for pure terror – but given they were worth 50% they did feel incredibly important to my life.
In the end I bombed out – fortunately Flinders University had just established a bachelor of economics with a weirdly low entry score and I snuck in.
By the time I completed my honours year, my year 12 score would not have been good enough to get me into the degree.
So did it all matter in the end? As for most of us, not really. And yet, that is little solace for those in the midst of the stressful rite of passage that is exam week.
To those students I can only say that tougher tests will come your way, and you too might be able one day to look back and realise that you still have no idea what the heck all that gibberish in the physics exam was about. Your results will most likely deliver neither lifetime glory nor destruction.
