Exams, especially in a country like India create a pressure cooker situation. The high degree of competition, your expectations from yourself as well your peer group contributes to an increased blood pressure. You can find lots of proponents of science and logical thinking processes making their children rush to temples before examinations, many seek blessings of all their elders. No matters how confused you are about the importance of the exam for you, no matter how your parents and peer groups are confused about the impact of the particular exam on your career, you and all around you want you perform exceptionally good- after all an exam is an exam. The most of we Indian have been conditioned in manner as if exams are battle grounds. This adds to mental stress and pressure, in some cases, the exam taker breaks down under mental stress.
Let me term the exam period as pressure cooker situation- you are boiling out of tremor inside, but no one outside can see you boiling. You want to move out (say, by an early exam taking), but the fixed dates would keep you in the cooker till the exam is over. If you are not so lucky, to add to your pain the Parkinson's Law would prevail to ensure that you read, re-read, revise, re-revise the same boring topics of the book till your exam is over.
As students, we have witnessed out Parkinson's Law- "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion" adds to the pressure cooker situation of exam days.
When I introspect some my experience of exam time, I see Parkinson's Law has proved its validity again and again. Here goes some examples and personal experiences:
- Students negotiating dates of examination seeking an extension with the hope that they would be able to finish everything only if the dates are extended. Then the same same students complain either about (1) the additional pressure due to additional days of preparation or about (2) not being able to finish the course despite the extension (due to expansion of the work to fill the time available).
- Students peeping into a book, note till the exam bill rings, their studying expands till the last minute available to them. Subjects like communication skills are no exception.
- Even if there is an objective type paper, where you either know the answer or don't know- most of the students keep pondering about the question till the finish bell rings. Their effort to find out an answer out of the blue expands as they know they have time.
- Some students keep on writing their answer (yes, sometimes stories) till the invigilator comes and drags their answer paper
It's understandable when people want to expands their time span of pleasant situation. But why on earth many students love to expand pressure cooker situations like exam duration, postponement of exams, peeping into a book till exam bill rings?
May be there is a need to make every student understand Parkinson's law, so that at least a few of them would try to minimize pressure cooker situation despite seeking an extension of exam date or duration etc.
