Exams are funny things. I remember, years ago, as a fresh faced first year student, cramming until the last minute, a look of sheer terror on my face as I contemplated the possibility of failing an exam. Having not slept for weeks, trying to get my head around Aristotle, Macchiavelli and New Right Politics, I went into exams, worried that I might fail.
Fast forward to today. I am studying a Unit (and “study” is putting it very lightly) about the Internation Global Political Economy — a concept I have become quite familiar with over the past 8 years of my life. I did no study. My Reader and textbooks are all pretty much unopened, save for the odd coffee stain where I got momentary episdes of guilt and fell asleep with coffee in my hand. I walked into the exam today with a completey different approach to the one I took in 1997, having done absolutely no study whatsoever, and walking in with a Distinction average (for basically writing shit about globalisation — “oh the ills! what about the poor?! What about the NIKE FACTORIES?! The RIAA are EEEEVIL!” and so forth), and a pretty good sense of the crap I needed to spit forth in order to pass. I answered all the questions in an hour, and left, free as a bird, whilst the anxious pen scratchings of second-year Politics students drilled into my brain like Chinese water torture.
For the last week I have realised that I am done in this area of study for a couple of years. I just don’t feel challenged, or feel like I need to put any sort of effort in anymore. There is something drastically wrong when a person who is committed to the lifelong pursuit of learning and excellence walks into an exam and doesn’t give a fuck. I really don’t. I know that in my hour of writing I wrote just enough to get by, just enough to have the lecturer think that I am not a complete retard, and life goes on.
This isn’t what education is about. So I have pulled out of my Masters, to study something different, most likely doing a year of Dip Ed to reinvigorate my interests in a more interesting area.