The End of End terms

The cheer and noise of my friends from outside Father Prabhu Hall who had finished their last exams before time while I was still thinking and writing to make some sense proved how big a relief it was. The uproar compelled me to submit mine too and join the party. Yes, end terms will return but right now the small joy of their end is bigger than their intimidation of coming again. 

Exam-fever can catch you at any age. You cannot get immune to it. It is indifferent to the facts that we all have faced many such exams long before in our lives and that we have faced tougher situations than them in our professional careers.  End terms are like a heptathlon event in sports.  Each exam different from the other yet fundamentally requires the same stamina and temperament. Interesting stories emerged after each exam. Consider this, "The heart start thumping as you are about to hit the final key on calculator to check if balance-sheet balances. And you get a mini heart-attack when you  see that liabilities are not equal to assets. The term 'balanced balance-sheet' seems oxymoron in that moment and it appears all those balanced balance sheets in the world must be fudged". Tragic as well as hilarious.

What I liked most about the end terms was the intensity in the environment. It is incredible to see people putting such efforts after a long hiatus from academic life. Some of us were going to sleep at four in the morning while others were waking up at that hour. Good mornings or good nights made no sense. Did we decouple ourselves from time or were we following different time zones in the same time zone?  For many, library was the new bedroom. Some studied in groups and executed divide and conquer. The deserted path to GMP hostel almost looked like a curfew being imposed. Astonishing adaptation!

Sleep deficit in GMP must have raised dangerously close to India's fiscal deficit and as Indian government awakes to overcome it through recent announcements of FDI in retail and aviation, cut in fuel subsidy and disinvestment, let us all sleep enough to reduce our deficit too in the one week break.

Happy Sleeping GMP...Go Hibernate..