My First University MATLAB Exam Experience
The experiences of sitting in the examination hall are really full of torture, great tension, mental agony, and excitement, even if the examinee happens to be a topper in the class. He finds the prying and suspicious looks of the invigilators and the terror of the examiners highly discouraging. The fear of running short of time continuously haunts like a ghost. Really speaking, the very word ‘examination’ sends shivers down everyone’s spine, whether it is a public or a home examination.
Even those of us who are meritorious and brilliant suffer from examination phobia. Sitting for an examination has been my old enemy since the day I had entered the portals of school. My first university MATLAB exam was no different and brought a unique blend of excitement and dread.
It started with the examination for admission. Now I am talking about my condition during my first MATLAB examination. My mind was gripped with all sorts of fear. Concepts of Variables and Data Types, Arithmetic Operators, and Matrix Operations swirled in my head, creating a whirlpool of anxiety.
Finally, the great day of my examination arrived. I got up earlier than usual, had a quick bath, and started revising my notes on Control Flow and Logical Operators. The more I revised, the more I felt confused and upset. My mother advised me not to study any more but to take breakfast and give rest to my mind. "You know your Element-wise Operations and 2D Plotting well," she reassured me.
I dropped my notes and put on a forced smile on my face just to look cheerful and composed to others. By this time, my father had also got ready. Both of us left home quite early since it was the first day of the ordeal.
On reaching the center, we saw a huge crowd of boys and girls outside the building. Most of them were examinees flanked by well-wishers. I could, however, note that each one of them had a peculiar kind of expression on his or her face. This was proof that, no matter how happy they looked outwardly, they were all fear-ridden like me, likely contemplating Relational Operators and Signal Processing.
On the wall of the university building at the entrance, the list of examinees had been displayed. I saw my name and roll number given against the room in which my seat was placed. As the bell rang, we were directed to our seats by some kind invigilators. My seat was in a big hall. There was perfect stillness and deadly silence.
Soon we were given answer books at our seats by two invigilators. I wrote my roll number and filled other columns. After that, I went through the instructions meant for us. I searched my pockets to ensure that there was no objectionable piece of paper in them, not even a cheat sheet on Numerical Methods or Image Processing.
Another bell, after some time, made all of us expectantly cautious. At the toll of it, we got our question papers. I closed my eyes and said my prayers to God. This gave me the long-awaited confidence and courage. I read the question paper fearlessly and found that it was neither too easy nor too tough. It was an intelligent paper, covering topics like 3D Plotting, Data Analysis and Machine Learning, and Simulink.
I tick-marked all those questions which I had intended to attempt. I first tried those questions which looked easy. They took me much longer than expected as I wrote their answers very slowly. There was no time to raise my head and see what others were doing. I felt disturbed when one of the two invigilators came to check my admission card.
I was busy writing my answers with renewed confidence, tackling questions on Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) and Control Flow, when all of a sudden a roaring sound was heard. It was the commanding voice of an invigilator who had caught a student red-handed, copying the answer from the torn pages of a guide. The answer book was taken back from him, and a new one was supplied.
To check if I would finish all the questions in time, I looked at the clock in the hall. I got nervous to see that only fifteen minutes were left, and still there was one more question to be attempted. I started writing its answer with full vigor, following the hard beats of my heart. I was greatly relieved that when the last bell rang, I had almost finished my paper, even managing to scribble the final details on Signal Processing and Matrix Operations.
The invigilator came to my seat and took away the answer paper. I heaved a sigh of relief to know that the examination was, after all, not so difficult and shattering as I had thought it to be. The blend of excitement and dread had passed, leaving me with a sense of accomplishment. My first university MATLAB exam experience, though nerve-wracking, had tested not only my knowledge of Variables and Data Types, Arithmetic Operators, and 2D Plotting but also my endurance and perseverance.