"If you've written all you can in an essay during your exam, and can't think of anything further", my favourite teacher in school, Mrs. Moss, used to say, "move on! Don't just sit there waiting for divine inspiration! There are other answers to be written!"
Advice that I took seriously. It was difficult not to, given how animated she became whenever she talked - whether it was about history, literature, life or just general examination advice. Her eyes would sparkle with enthusiasm and genuine love for what she did, her hands did some explaining of their own...and her smile was one of the loveliest I had ever known. It still is. When Mrs. Moss taught you, she played Cupid between you and the subject...and you fell for it for life.
Coming back to moving on instead of sitting around waiting for divine inspiration, well, that's a great approach to life. When you've done all you can about something and cannot think of anything further, no matter how hard you push your gray cells - who knows, it is time to move on. It made a lot of sense to me back then. The question would read, "What is your stand in the Nature v Nurture debate? Elaborate with special reference to Caliban in The Tempest." And even when you're as obsessed as I am with literature and its layers of meaning, there's only so much that you can think of when you are asked to pen your thoughts within, ideally, 20 minutes, for 12 marks. I could argue this all day with a friend...but put me in an exam hall, with a clock tick-tocking away at eye-level and three unattempted questions and forty remaining minutes staring me in the face...and you'd have a literature-loving, well-prepared twelfth-grader grappling with an impossible mix of surfeit and spacing-out.
It still makes sense, though, doesn't it? For every crisis, every decision and every situation that life hurls at us with its mercilessly regular playfulness, we fall back on what we know already; we rummage for past experience, wisdom, knowledge or plain facts and figures that can help us make a decision or find a solution. Sometimes, we have the luxury of thinking our decisions through. More often than not, we improvise and hope for the best. On other occasions, without a single clue about what we're writing, we fill seven pages. All the time, we're hoping we will fetch ourselves a 12/12. When we know the answer isn't so great, we hope for a 7 or an 8. And there are still three answers to write, and only 40 minutes to go.
But it always works out in the end. In fact, it works out better than you imagined. But for that, you've got to complete the paper. And to complete the paper, you've got to move on once you have written all that you can in an essay. No use sitting around waiting for divine inspiration, as Mrs. Moss put it. There are other answers to be written.
Advice that I took seriously. It was difficult not to, given how animated she became whenever she talked - whether it was about history, literature, life or just general examination advice. Her eyes would sparkle with enthusiasm and genuine love for what she did, her hands did some explaining of their own...and her smile was one of the loveliest I had ever known. It still is. When Mrs. Moss taught you, she played Cupid between you and the subject...and you fell for it for life.
Coming back to moving on instead of sitting around waiting for divine inspiration, well, that's a great approach to life. When you've done all you can about something and cannot think of anything further, no matter how hard you push your gray cells - who knows, it is time to move on. It made a lot of sense to me back then. The question would read, "What is your stand in the Nature v Nurture debate? Elaborate with special reference to Caliban in The Tempest." And even when you're as obsessed as I am with literature and its layers of meaning, there's only so much that you can think of when you are asked to pen your thoughts within, ideally, 20 minutes, for 12 marks. I could argue this all day with a friend...but put me in an exam hall, with a clock tick-tocking away at eye-level and three unattempted questions and forty remaining minutes staring me in the face...and you'd have a literature-loving, well-prepared twelfth-grader grappling with an impossible mix of surfeit and spacing-out.
It still makes sense, though, doesn't it? For every crisis, every decision and every situation that life hurls at us with its mercilessly regular playfulness, we fall back on what we know already; we rummage for past experience, wisdom, knowledge or plain facts and figures that can help us make a decision or find a solution. Sometimes, we have the luxury of thinking our decisions through. More often than not, we improvise and hope for the best. On other occasions, without a single clue about what we're writing, we fill seven pages. All the time, we're hoping we will fetch ourselves a 12/12. When we know the answer isn't so great, we hope for a 7 or an 8. And there are still three answers to write, and only 40 minutes to go.
But it always works out in the end. In fact, it works out better than you imagined. But for that, you've got to complete the paper. And to complete the paper, you've got to move on once you have written all that you can in an essay. No use sitting around waiting for divine inspiration, as Mrs. Moss put it. There are other answers to be written.
2 comments:
'There are other answers to be written'
I like that line.
Thank you...I like it because it holds true in so many ways...
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