The Consistent Irregular

Back after a justifiably long nand tiring break... Im not sure how funny nor awry this post's gonna be. It is probably going to have all the aspects of a technical paper that failed to be published, but here I go... in a momentum rise-time delay between two exams. The air-gap that's created between two exams always gives you this porous feeling that has to be given sufficient temperature and shearing stress to facilitate better alignment that exhibit good permeability into the inner layers of the human brain.

Phew! Even after six years of university and many more years of writing exams ( I remember writing exam since I was in kindergarten ... and appearing in the "India Today" magazine for complaining about it when I was 5!! ), some aspects of exam preparation just do not change. Fighting between two totally unrelated subjects of circuit design and membrane science, my mind is but an entanglement of hollow fibers and logic gates...

Old habits die hard, and I am proud to be part of the huge bunch of people who are last-minute muggers. Now these poor souls have an exponential sinusoidal curve of study-relax-study which begins to rise as slowly as a anti-logarithmic function of time, and then suddenly peaks to the maximum on the day before, sometimes night before, or even on the day of the exam. Of course there are always papers, for which the momentum peaks in the examination hall!

In the study-relax-study mode, the relax mode could take various forms. Nerds (with due respect to them) consider going to relieve themselves urgently after a long session, a good enough break. To some it could be as simple as a puff of cigarette or a can of coke. Others could listen to the same song or even the same line of the song over and over again. I know people who take breaks even before they start their study for the day.

Im not sure if you have noticed that even if there are 5 days to study for the exam, the last day seems to be reserved for the peak of the exponent - or about 80% of the preparation. No one knows where one gets the strength and concentration on that day. On the last day, some people spend the relax mode thinking "... if only I had spent this effort one 3 days during the rest of the year... I would have been relaxed now" Really?

Sometimes the 'relax' break is spent planning. There have been exams where I could and did plan on which chapter to skip since it could be left in choice at the exam. For other exams, I have planned on the grade I would be satisfied with, and the amount of leeway that gave me to skip more chapters. Apart from finding such legitimate or illegitimate methods of skipping chapters, the planning could take other funny forms like "... I should change my studying tactics for my next exam, next semester or next year ... " or even "... I think I need a break. Hey! Isnt it high time I visited Angkor Wat!"

Have you ever wondered why the best musical concepts, the best cooking recipes or the most artistic ideas struck you when you were stuck neck-deep into a math problem. And as you are debating whether to proceed with the problem or with the idea, a long-lost friend would walk past and say "Hey! How's it going?" Fighting to avoid the inevitable expression and forcing a smile, 2 things could happen to you. Either your friend's smart, realizes its not a good time and walks away. Or he decides to make himself comfortable at a table near you and thats when some of the most uninteresting conversations or even monologues take place.

And then suddenly the realization dawns upon you... as it does now on me... "Gosh! its time for me to get up and get going. Iv got lots to study. Bye!!!"

The Consistent Irregular