Days, months and weeks, of anticipation. Guessing and second guessing yourself. Attempts to reverse-engineer the psychology of the game-maker.

What do they know that I do not? Breathy unrest simmers. Heart races. Everything will all soon be revealed, and yet we remain here in unbridled ignorance. You plan, you worry, you rehearse and recite. Over and over and over again.

Finally the day arrives. Stripped bare, only your mind and its contents allowed, you step in and take your place. Quaking and shaking, you have arrived in the place that seemed forever on the other side of tomorrow.

The next hours are fraught – a frenzied splurge of symbols, ideas, argument and justification. Gratitude, fear, confusion and repentance. Then air, like a deep gasp of breath, after you’ve swam far deeper than you ought to have.

And then, you finish. Instruments are put down, chairs grate across the lacquered surface beneath, and you are released from your shackles, into the gracious arms of soaring ecstasy.

Buzzy, fuzzy, relief-drenched, glee-quenched ecstasy, that makes your head feel like it’s full of popping candy.

There is nothing quite like an exam.

…

I was always a great lover of exams. The anticipation, the challenge, the opportunity to showboat, the feeling of unadulterated freedom once you finish.

Of course, I was never so foolish to share such sinful thoughts. How uncool that would have been. How kiss-arse, how golden boy, how eye-rollingly lame. ‘Oh give it a rest, Sam’.

Studying for A-levels and GCSEs was, to now be open and honest, a beautiful time. You’re given a philosophy text book, or a CGP Chemistry guide, and you rest comfortably in the knowledge that their contents represent the totality of all requisite knowledge to ace the challenge posed.

Just sit down, read, make notes, plan possible essays, and repeat, repeat, repeat. Take A-Level politics, for instance. Each exam was structured as a series of essay questions, each worth something like 25 marks. One of my inspired teachers encouraged us to make supernotes, a form of learning I’d deem indispensable for anyone studying the humanities whilst in sixth form.

Step 1: Write out a list of every single possible exam questions; Step 2: Write out comprehensive plans for each one, including all Points, Evidence and Evaluations; then Step 3: Just learn it. Any sense of ignorance, or limitation, or intellectual insufficiency, easily swatted away by the confidence that nothing sent your way will be a surprise.

University exams were an entirely different bag of crisps. Faced with the totality of all knowledge and ideas, where on earth am I to start? Thanks to the COVID pandemic, I was spared the brutality of having to sit such exams in person. All mine were online, with 24 hours allowed, and open access to any books or notes. I won’t pretend – such examinations do not test one with the comprehensive rigor that in person exams do.

But they do provide tantalising opportunity. Unconstrained by the stricture of an hour’s time window where editing is not possible, or by the deceptive feeling of forever one has when writing coursework, a unique form of essay writing is enabled. Combine this with some nitrous-sweet sleep deprivation, and an excellent recipe for creatively unbounded thinking is presented.

Over the past weeks, as part of my (much-more-intensive-than-expected) cabin crew training, I’ve taken exams nearly every day. Practical assessments in mock cabins, spoken exams testing knowledge, and uncountable multiple-choice validations.

This return, to formal and structured testing, has been a joyous one. There is a set number (albeit enormously sized) list of things to learn. There is sufficient anticipation built up for each study, and the stakes are set pretty high. Not meeting passing grades twice in a row equals removal from the course. Thus, each day has carried with it, in addition to great laughter and insight, a low-level feeling of trepidation.

In trying to hoover up all relevant titbits of information, a constant buzz of attentiveness must be maintained. Accompanying this is a sense of trepidation for the test in question, as well as an expectation of the hopefully relief-filled feeling awaiting on the other side.

Multiple choice exams, as I’m sure you’d agree, represent a delightful format of knowledge appraisal. Presented with four choices, one of them is always easily dismissed as ridiculous. The next answer can be removed through a bit of careful reasoning, leaving a 50/50 toss up. A well-designed multiple choice question then leaves you with two answers that could both seem logical.

You go to confidently tick one, but hesitate with your pen over the paper. Am I sure? Yeah, absolutely. But I could have sworn I have heard something about the alternative mentioned somewhere… No, I’m definitely not sure.

Such is the beauty of multiple choice. You are given the correct answer, but you are also the fertile bed of second-guessing into which a seed of doubt is placed. You are caught in this uncertainty trap, ultimately having to just go with your gut.

Multiple choice is one thing, but online multiple choice exams? My goodness, they are something else. As you click through, from one question to the next, you constantly mentally stack the odds of you having met the pass rate. When the time comes to submit, you are not then staring down the barrel of two months of marking and remarking.

Instead, you are provided with a sublimely instantaneous hit of dopamine. Much like a song, that builds and builds, threatening to resolve, and then ultimately does so in an earth-shattering crescendo of relief. All the tension built up gives way in a tsunami of resolution and joy.

You click submit, and you are told you have passed. The examiner comes and checks your e-learning history, nods, and says you can leave. So you do, with a pep in your step and a song in your heart.

Blimey. Life doesn’t get much better than that.