Exams. Where 3 months of lectures, notes and readings are somehow summed up within a three hour time period.

No doubt employers are greatly reassured that their future employees entire educational knowledge could only take them three hours to communicate. Either way, I have noted that this stressful time period for students is sending everyone slightly insane. The hospital has notified the public about an influx of university students admitting themselves with coffee and red bull addictions, whilst suffering from delirium, as they rock back and forth rattling off incomprehensible definitions and quotations from their chosen papers. They have labelled this disease as ‘examination-preparation-overload‘, also known as EPO. Hopefully John Keys new budget has incorporated a small amount in the health section for the treatment of this. Unfortunately I have already started to see symptoms of EPO, as our brains become so overloaded with trying to learn the entire semester within one week that general common sense goes out the window.
We had a sunny day in Wellington on Saturday, so myself and some friends decided to ditch the textbooks and take advantage of this rare opportunity. We made our way to a seal colony which has recently inhabited the south coast, when the first stages of EPO started to show in my friend. Ignoring the ‘do not touch' signs he proceeded to try and ‘bond' with the seals. He got within an arm's length when the seal turned and roared, its smelly breath causing us all to get slightly lightheaded. Well my friend ran, and the seal went back to lying in its vegetative state.
It was then only the next day that I was talking to another friend who recently went to the zoo (One of the symptoms of EPO is reverting back to childhood.) He was describing how wonderful the giraffes were.
‘You know those pointy things on top of their head, are they horns?' He asked me.
‘Possibly.'
‘Oh, I wonder what they're used for.'
‘For riding, the Africans leap from trees onto their necks and use the horns as handles.'
‘Really? Wow, that's quite amazing.'
‘Yes. Yes it is.'
In walking away from that conversation I pondered what benefit exams are actually doing for us. Sure we can scribble down facts and figures for three hours straight, but your employer is not going to find that very beneficial if you can't come to work because you've been eaten by seals, or have broken your leg whilst leaping from a tree in an attempt to ride a giraffe. A paper for ‘reinstating common sense' needs to be taken before entering the workforce. And so to students who are suffering from EPO, hang in there. We will make it through. I must go however; my flatmate is hanging from the balcony with one arm, attempting to fly like the pigeons. Another good brain lost to education.