I Still Blink and Forget Everything the Second I Get a Test Paper
Last Wednesday I sat down for my plant physiology midterm, pen clicked, paper flipped over, and the first question stared up at me: Name and give one example of three modified plant stems. I’d studied this. I wrote those terms and examples three times on a sheet of notebook paper the night before. I quizzed myself on it while waiting for the bus, while my roommate burned our garlic bread for dinner, even while I was brushing my teeth Tuesday night. I knew it. But right then, staring at the blank line under the question, I couldn’t have told you a single thing. I couldn’t even remember what a stem was, for that matter. I couldn’t even remember my own student ID number, which I’ve had to type out a hundred times this semester. My brain was just static, like an old TV left on a dead channel.
This isn’t a new thing for me. I’ve had it happen since I was 12. I remember a pop quiz in 10th grade algebra: I’d done all the homework the night before, got every single practice problem right, even stayed after class to ask extra questions because I wanted to make sure I got it. Mrs. Henderson passed out the quizzes, said we had 15 minutes, and when I flipped mine over, the first question was a quadratic equation and I just… froze. I couldn’t remember what x stood for, couldn’t remember how to factor anything, just sat there sweating through my oversized Fall Out Boy hoodie while everyone around me scribbled away. When the bell rang I’d written two answers down, and both were wrong. Got a 32 on that quiz. When my mom asked me what happened after she saw my grade book, I told her I’d forgotten to study. I didn’t know how to explain that I had studied, I just couldn’t pull any of it out when I needed it. It sounded like a bad excuse, even to me.
Everyone always has something to say about it, right? Oh it’s just test anxiety, you just need to breathe more. You need to sleep 8 hours, stop drinking coffee before tests, meditate 10 minutes every morning, stop cramming the night before. I’ve heard all of it. I tried most of it. I went to the campus counseling center last year because I blanked so bad on a bio midterm I almost failed the whole class, and the counselor gave me the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding trick, told me to do it when I feel the panic coming. I tried it on my next test. Named five things I could see: my pink eraser, the clock ticking on the wall, a piece of blue lint on the floor, my scuffed white converse, the girl’s lavender dyed hair in front of me. Four things I could feel: the hard plastic of the chair, the rough cotton of my jeans, the pen in my hand, the cool edge of the desk. By the time I finished the whole exercise, ten minutes had gone by, and I still couldn’t remember what the Krebs cycle did. It just didn’t work. And I felt dumber for having tried it, like I’d wasted all that time just to still be blank.
Last Wednesday, after I’d stared at that modified stems question for five minutes, my hand started moving on its own and I drew a little lopsided cactus in the margin of the answer sheet. I wasn’t even thinking about it, I was just panicking and my hands have to do something. I thought about how the cherry sour candy I had stuffed in my jacket pocket was probably melted by now, and how I needed to do laundry when I got home, and if my roommate would remember to pick up the oat milk we needed for the week. And then, just like that, out of nowhere, tubers, rhizomes, bulbs popped into my head. Potatoes, ginger, tulips. That’s it. I didn’t force it, I wasn’t even trying to remember it anymore. It just showed up.
That doesn’t always work, though. Last semester I had a stats midterm, I blanked on the definition of a p-value. I doodled three little cats wearing tiny graduation caps in the margin, I thought about my laundry, I thought about the camping trip I was planning that summer, I even sat there for 15 minutes and it never came. I left the question blank, walked out of the exam, and cried in my car for 10 minutes because I knew the answer. I could write that definition in my sleep. It just wouldn’t come when I needed it.
I’ve had this in so many other silly places, too. My driver’s test: I’d practiced parallel parking a hundred times with my dad, could do it in one try every single time we practiced. When the instructor said pull into that spot over there, I forgot which way to turn the wheel. Hit the curb. Had to take the test again two weeks later. I once blanked on my own manager’s name when a customer asked to speak to me at my old retail job. That wasn’t even a test, it was just a question, but it felt like a test, I guess, and my brain just dipped.
People always act like if you prepare enough, if you’re calm enough, it won’t happen. But I’ve had this happen when I slept 8 hours, ate a full breakfast, didn’t drink too much coffee, studied for a week straight. I’ve had it happen when I was calm, when I wasn’t even that worried about the grade. It just… happens. It’s like my brain decides that because this thing matters, it needs to lock all the good stuff away somewhere I can’t get to it. I don’t know why it does that. I don’t think I’ll ever figure it out.
I guess the only thing I’ve learned that actually helps a little is to stop panicking when it happens. I used to sit there and beat myself up, tell myself I’m stupid, I should’ve studied more, I messed this all up, and that just makes it worse. Now I just let my brain wander. I doodle dumb little things, I think about whatever dumb thing pops into my head, I don’t force it. Half the time the answer comes back. Half the time it doesn’t. I still get grades lower than I should sometimes, I still have to retake things occasionally, I still leave exams crying in the parking lot every once in a while. It’s not a fix. It doesn’t make it go away. It just makes it a little less awful, I guess.
I don’t have some nice wrap-up to this, where I cured my brain blank and now I ace every test. I still deal with it. I still don’t have a good explanation for when people ask me why I got a bad grade when I studied so much. I’m just used to it now, I guess. And if you’re sitting there reading this and you get this too, you’re not stupid. You didn’t do anything wrong. Your brain just does a weird thing sometimes. That’s all. (Word count: 1182)
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