I’m turning 22 in coming March and I have been through way too many exam seasons - a little too many than I would like in all honesty. This year was not much different except this year I, along with my batch mates, had our lives’ toughest and most important exams to give.
Being a computer science major was never really easy. It would be wrong of me to assume that other majors had it any easy because I know for a fact that they didn’t, but that’s how third year is usually spend - worrying about passing ones exams and ultimately ones graduation.
If I were back home in Pakistan, I would’ve given these exams from the comfort of my home for the universities back home are still under lockdown and students are still not allowed to physically take classes anymore than they’re allowed to practically do anything else. Since Germany recovered rather quickly from the COVID-19 shocks and aftershocks and first, second, third, and fourth waves, we did not have a choice but to appear - in all but ourselves - for the dreadful final exams of the final Fall semester of our bachelor lives.
December, cold as ever, has always been a tough month to survive as a student whether you’re in Germany or Pakistan for that matter. At our university, there’s quiet hours that extend from the morning until very late in the night, the college offices, the university library, as well as the servers are packed with students staring at their laptops and writing continuously in their respected - and appreciated - bids to pass their final exams. For some there are deadlines looming and for some there are presentations awaiting. For all of us, though, there’s this anxious and terrible feeling that we feel but cannot overcome until we’re done and dusted with the semester.
In this environment that is created during the month of December, there’s a coordination of things and an urge to help each other do better. Personally, I spend hours over hours discussing, studying, analysing, and worrying over endless streams of papers and data with my friends and their friends and their friends. I think I established more friendships and cemented more relationships in December than I did in the whole semester as a whole. I’m sure it was the same for everyone else as well for this is how a student’s life works: we collect ourselves as one to face the everlasting danger (pun intended) that lies at the end of the road.
The class of 2022 will graduate this coming semester and these memories that we made sitting in the IRC, our rooms, our friends’ rooms, and the college offices will always remain with us. I am not saying that we will specifically miss the episode where we’re studying, but we will miss each other’s company. Tragic is the way of life, in my opinion, for we can never appreciate or enjoy the little things that we experience as we go. It’s almost like meeting someone in an overnight flight by chance and you both know once you land, the chances that you’re going to see each other again are minuscule, but you pour your heart out at the person sitting in seat 34F for what could go wrong?
I’m turning 22 in coming March and I have been through way too many exam seasons - maybe a little too less.
BY MUHAMMAD SHAHZAIB TAHIR AWAN (PAKISTAN) | CLASS OF 2022
