Post Exam Stress Disorder

It feels like I'm not making that up.  Harder than the exam is this wait to find out what my marks are for the work I did this past module/semester.  The exam covered material Genesis (the book, not the band) to Revelation (no 's') and the questions could have come from anywhere in between.  A little bit Narrative Theology and a little bit Bible Trivia.  No matter what my mark is I feel like I know the material - Narrative Theology - and could take someone else through it.  Which is good since I will.

We had 3 hours to take the exam and I finished somewhere around the 90 minute mark.  I could've written longer answers but I tried to cover the basics and leave it at that.  Back in the undergrad days, 25+ years ago, my essay answers were written as much for effect as they were for information.  I could write an answer so long I was sure my instructors would rather give me the benefit of the doubt than actually read through the whole answer to see if I knew what I was talking about.

The questions could come from any of the 50 questions we had to study from.  Exams like these are always a gamble.  Did I spend enough time of the right questions out of the 50?  This time I guessed wrong.  There were a few questions that I thought, "no way will that be on there...".  My bad.  Some questions that I thought were key to the material didn't even get honourable mention.  Nevertheless, there was only one question I had to completely pull a rabbit out of my hat on.  I hope to find out soon if the rabbit died or not.  I also suspect some of my other answers made sense to me but probably didn't adequately respond to the question.

It took me at least 2 hours after the exam to start talking in complete sentences to my wife, the elusive Donna.  She encouraged me that I took it and finished it - not that she didn't think I wouldn't or couldn't but she cheered me for getting it done.  I think she was as relieved this round was over as much as I was.

One thing I noticed that's different from my undergrad days: I still remember the information I studied.  Back in my BS days, or is that BA?  I forget...I remembered what I studied for the length of the test (sometimes less) and then let it all slip away once I survived the exam.  This time it's staying with me and it's actually re-framing how I understand the Bible.

Now that that's done I'm starting the reading for my next module that's due by February 15th.  2662 pages.  10 books.  10 papers.  100 quotes and notes.

And once I get my grades I may wish I was waiting again.  I have so much to learn.

Happy Holidays.

P.S.  For those wondering about fundraising to Educate Brian - we have now reached the $1200 mark!!!!  Woohoo!  We're moving on up to the $10,000 overall that I need to raise and the $4500 I need to raise by the end of this month (December)!!!  Thanks to all of you who have given so generously to help me get educated!