The Fear

As a third year law student in the middle of exam season, The Fear has been occuping my thoughts rather a lot of late. Famous plaguer of students, The Fear has come to be a routine and expected part of university life and often, if you don't profess to have it, your fellow students look at you like you're unstable, delusional or just plain crazy.

So what is it? Fear is often defined as "an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm." This doesn't seem quite right for The Fear though, as the exam isn't going to literally jump off the table and attack us - the worst it will really do is threaten us with a papercut (which even our favourite books do on a regular basis). Clearly a new definition is required. How about this - 

"The Fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the growing immediacy of an academic challenge" 

Again, this doesn't seem to fit the bill - if we didn't like academic challenge, why did we sign up to a university degree? What is it we're really afraid of when we go into an exam hall?

The Fear seems to be a relatively new phenomenon, at least in that we didn't seem to experience it when we were younger. Five years ago when I was sitting my GCSEs and A Levels I didn't have The Fear, and neither did my friends. We were nervous, yes, and anxious to do well, but we were never afraid of exams the way we seem to be today. Somewhere between school and university, between being an innocent little fresher taking their first independant steps out into the world and becoming a fully fledged graduate, The Fear creept into our hearts and settled in for the long haul.

Why has The Fear become so important? A growing number of students use it as a study tool for last-minute cramming, while some use it to heighten their focus just before going into the exam hall. The majority, however, find it debilitating, distracting and detrimental to their learning. So why do we continue to foster it and allow it to rule us during the exam season and before every deadline?

Perhaps to really understand the role that The Fear plays we need to look beyond the cloistered walls of academia to the "real" world. In a world with a faltering economy and highly competitive job market, to complete a three or four year university course can cost tens of thousands of pounds and a mediocre result may mean that you miss out on the best opportunities. Maybe it can serve a purpose then as preparation for students exiting the sheltered world of study, but is it really useful? For those with perfect recall and photographic memories, perhaps the motivation it gives helps, but for the rest of us normal mortals, I don't think it helps at all.

This morning I had a three hour closed book exam on the law of the World Trade Organisation (yes, that subject really is as dull as it sounds), and I definitely had The Fear going in. Strangely though, for the last three days of studying, I didn't have The Fear. Instead, I had a quiet confidence that I would memorise and learn everything I needed to and be able to answer the questions that the professor set. Yet despite that confidence in my abilities I still woke up today scared of the exam, very nervous and unable to go over my notes one last time. It might be good in the long run as preparation of the younger generation for the stress and toil of the workplace, but I don't think it really served my best interests this morning. Luckily for me, once I got into the exam and started writing I got that quiet confidence back and left the exam relatively happy, but I know that many of my classmates were flicking back and forth through the exam booklet in fear.

Maybe the best way to use The Fear is to look it straight in the eye and tell it to go back to the cave it crawled out of. That way we could feel better about ourselves as students and as confident adults without the unpleasantness of The Fear festering away in our hearts waiting for the next opportunity to take us over.