Revision is fast-track to exam success

CAN you remember the hardest test you ever took? Maybe it was a swimming challenge, a Geography A-Level or a driving test? Perhaps it was a tricky exam which earned you professional qualifications and allowed you to progress in your work?

Or could it even have been something you took on in later life, such as a computer course?

I’ve had to think about this recently on my regular commute from home into Derby for work.

Because, judging by the chat from the travellers – mainly younger blokes in their 20s who have been wearing East Midlands Railway polo shirts – there must be some impending exams on the horizon for them.

“Why would it be called a circuit breaker if it’s a trip switch?” I overheard one ask another as they tested each other across the carriage from me one morning this week. “It just doesn’t make sense?” Their folders were out on the table, pens were nervously being twiddled in their hands, and coffees and energy drinks were being eagerly devoured.

They engaged in some engineering speak which, to my ears at least, may well have been some foreign language.

One thing is for sure, whether they pass or not, this table of lads are and were clearly putting the revision in for whatever they’re being tested on.

And it got me reminiscing about what the hardest exam I have ever taken is, and I think I’ve shortlisted it down to two.

One was from when I was a couple of weeks short of my 16th birthday, and the other years later from my late 30s and early 40s.

The former saw me attempt to cook five main meals in two-and-ahalf hours for my cookery exam, after I rather foolishly chose to take Home Economics as an O-Level option rather than woodwork or metalwork all those years ago.

I was new to the school having moved from 150 miles north and was the only boy in the class for those two years – but that perhaps spurred me on to put in the extra effort.

Just having to try to cook five different dinners as the clock whirred round at an alarming rate was enough to send me into a gargantuan teenage panic.

I passed, but only just.

The second exam (or rather set of exams as it took me over a year to finally pass) was the bane of all budding journalists – shorthand.

That strange, Arabic-looking scrawl which we have to learn for our jobs is tricky enough for someone with a sharp mind and quick fingers, let alone a fella like me who’s scruffy longhand I inherited from my late father.

Hours upon hours upon hours of lessons and then practicing with a pen and notebook watching the TV made me realise how much I hated shorthand. Even when I go and speak to journalism students now I still say to them: “No-one hated shorthand more than me.”

And I stick by that, despite now using it all day, every day, in my job. The day I did finally achieve the 100 words per minute I required to move on and become a senior reporter was almost cathartic. My colleagues in the old Meadow Road building knew this as well, kindly clubbing together to buy me a celebratory cake with the shorthand outline for “well done” iced on top of it. And bought from Birds, obviously.

Exam season for many might be over, with teenagers like me – all those years ago – now nervously waiting for their results, knowing their future fates may be hanging in the balance.

But for the engineering apprentices (at least I assume that’s what they are) of East Midlands Railway, their time is now. And judging by the work they’re putting in on their commute to Midland railway station, success for them is a forgone conclusion.

Teenagers are now nervously waiting for their results, knowing their future fates may be hanging in the balance