😭 More than an exam, I went to war.

As from the title, this was the poetic thought dispensed by my mother today, after I returned home in the afternoon with a completely obliterated, unrecognizable psyche.

Up until 30 minutes before, good Maremma, I just wanted to explode**. Be careful, though: not for the exam itself (the last in a series of extra-curricular ones, precisely), very simple for me, which I don’t care about except the certification!^{< a href="#fn1">1} Something else happened.

Let’s go back

When I went through the first sessions two years ago, everything went very smoothly, almost chilling: those were still the times of anti-COVID restrictions, and those 2 exams I took at school were in a classroom that was not very crowded**.

This year, however, crap. I got the card without repeating anything, so my parents didn’t waste money on that matter, but the experience was terrifying.
The classroom at these rounds was always packed, and this very thing ended up being a problem for my soul.
I don’t think I deserve all this…

Problems in the air

Last month I took 2 tests out of the 3 I was missing, and already nothing went smoothly, at all:

1. My professor (project contact) hadn’t told me that I should have received a private link in the email address of the school domain to create an account on the online exam platform… Too bad I have access to email only on the Puppy Linux stick and on the tablet, and I can’t log in elsewhere². Result: I had to rush home to get the tablet and go back to school… Luckily I live nearby.

2. The testing platform totally broke when I finished one of the exams (not without difficulty, some questions were _[glitchate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch#Computer _glitch)_!): as soon as I started the second one, the system said that I had run out of time, and closed the test I had just started in my face. .. The prof. he had to waste time calling support to explain the matter, and after quite a mess the exam was reset as not taken.

Between both things, then, a good amount of time was wasted. And if that hadn’t been the case, maybe I would have** made it through all the exams that day.

The present

Let’s go back to today.
Once the hassle of waiting was over (not too problematic, thanks to the rectangle of plastic, glass, metal, with Internet connection, and pocket book, which I also always carry around), due to the fact that all the stations were initially occupied, ** start**.
…But I had never done it!

My first few minutes go fine, until a good selection (random, or did destiny carefully choose them?) of **monkeys also start finishing the exam **, who from the rows behind everything were babbling with those who (I imagine in confidence) still hadn’t finished, at an exaggerated volume and at the same time.
Here, now, slowly, the blood starts to boil in my body, as if it were a coffee pot, because with that mess I can’t read half of a question **without getting distracted ** totally. Even having earphones in my ears (but detached) didn’t attenuate the noise enough. Finish that way the exam? Impossible.

I tried

Before it was too late, I tried to call the teacher — who, damn the badass, was pretty distracted, because another person at that moment had the same glitch happen of my previous time (and here I have to: what a shitty backend this platform has, throw it away and rewrite it from scratch, please!!!).
I wanted to kindly tell him to keep all those who didn’t have the right to speak in silence, and after a few minutes (to his credit, of his own accord, a moment before he heard me) he babbled something (about unconvincing) to tell the audience to calm down. The audience did not quiet down, and the prof. he was going crazy due to the general problems, unfortunately, so little could he listen to me.

The last time there was less mess. Perhaps because there were fewer wrong individuals, perhaps because I was at the PC in the far corner of the room (which today was not turned on), perhaps because, given that there was an external commissioner, the rules could only be violated without making any noise. I do not know.

I even decide to call my father, upon arriving here, to tell him to call the professor on the phone; maybe this time he can understand. In fact, this time the call for silence was more convincing. Was it?

A disaster

But, now, too late anyway: my tension has risen too much, I am unable to regain a minimum of concentration, forcing myself, after perhaps 21 good months in which I was able to do without it , scratching myself to convert a minimal part of the mental load (which requires major mental energy to be managed, the same that I needed at that moment to complete my session) into skin burning (which, up to a certain level, is managed by the brain in the background). What a drag.

I’ve now done the damage, alas and what the fuck, and it seemed that everything was slowly calming down and concentration could return… but no. The call of the prof. it was however too soft and didn’t put down the bad behaviors of that part of the other students, he just put them on hold a bit.

The real solution

Dunno, at this point I simply feel like punching the desk and “screaming” (not that I know how to do it, but the punch is needed to make up for this; I unconsciously learned it from another professor of mine) to be quiet, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish anything, and… it worked. Oh?…
Yes, that’s all. I can’t say anything else about this moment, it immediately crystallized into goodness. From there, until I finished and could leave, not a fly flew again.

At that point, unfortunately, I had still accumulated the irritation, and it took me _hours and hours and hours to get rid of it**, between doing various things to case and writing this article.
The only thing I can logically regret is that I didn’t ring that bench a few precious minutes before seriously reaching the limit, since the gentle methods didn’t work. Unfortunately or fortunately, damn, it’s not a reflection that arises too often; only when I am already beyond that limit, and perhaps I have already committed other avoidable damage.

Yet, that doubt still remains: but what have I done that was so bad in the world to deserve these things? And let me understand…

🏷️ Notes and References

1. The certification… oh God, even the latter, not that I personally care: on my deathbed I certainly won’t be **counting cards ** which I could have but didn’t want to get; mainly my parents convinced me, so whatever. (If even this one expires before it can be seriously useful for anything, I’ll really be pissed off, but never mind…) ↩

2. Google’s fault (GSuite, shit), the school network is not recognized as trustworthy and doesn’t let me log in. That day I couldn’t even log in from my smartphone by connecting to my home VPN, for some reason! I explained the general problem better in my Puppy stick article, however, so I’ll post it there for those who are interested. ↩