I Still Stand By the Vending Machine Remembering Answers After Tests
I sat through my biology midterm last week staring at the first question for 12 full minutes. Not because it was tricky, not because I’d never seen the material before. I could picture the neon yellow highlight I dragged across that exact fact in my textbook, could even remember the ring of coffee I spilled on the bottom corner of page 117 when I was pulling an all-nighter three days before. But the name of the stupid enzyme? It was gone. Vanished. Like someone reached into my brain and deleted the file right before I could open it.
The pen I was chewing went dry halfway through that staring contest. The guy two seats over kept clicking his mechanical pen so hard the whole row shook. I kept wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans, and my jeans were already stained with coffee from that morning, so it didn’t help. The professor walked by once, glanced at my mostly empty paper, and I just hunched over like I was writing really hard, like if I pretended I was busy no one would notice my brain was just a blank white screen. It’s not even the worst it’s ever been, honestly. That honor goes to my 101 French oral exam last year, when I got halfway through my prepared monologue about my family and completely forgot the word for mother. I practiced that stupid speech 27 times the night before. I said it out loud while I was waiting in the line for coffee, while I was walking back to my dorm, while I was brushing my teeth. I get in front of the professor, she smiles and says “go ahead”, and I just… blank. The most basic word in the entire language. I stood there for 10 whole seconds, face getting hotter and hotter, and finally blurted “la femme de mon père” — the wife of my father. She just blinked. I still want to crawl into a hole when I think about it.
People always say this is test anxiety, right? And yeah, I get nervous before tests, but sometimes I’m totally chill and it still happens. Last semester I had that sociology midterm, I got 8 full hours of sleep, ate oatmeal with peanut butter for breakfast, walked to class slow, listened to my favorite folk playlist that’s supposed to calm me down. I sat down, flipped the paper over, first question: “Name and explain the three core premises of conflict theory”. I’d written those three points three times in my notes, I’d stayed after lecture to ask my professor a question about them, I’d even explained them to my roommate when she was panicking about her own test the night before. Gone. Nothing. Nada. I couldn’t even pull out one. I ended up writing something about inequality that I guessed from the name, got half credit, and walked out to the vending machine by the lecture hall, bought a root beer, and the three premises popped right into my head. All three, clear as day. Why then? Why not 45 minutes earlier when I needed them?
I used to think this was my fault, that I just didn’t study hard enough, or I studied wrong. I tried all the things: spaced repetition, flashcards, teaching the material to my cat, getting a better night’s sleep, cutting out caffeine before tests, all of it. It still happens. My psych professor mentioned it once in passing, called it something about retrieval failure, said it’s not that the information isn’t in there, it’s just that the stress of being tested jams the little doorway you have to go through to get it out. That makes sense, I guess. It never happens when it doesn’t count. When we’re playing trivia at the bar down the street, and the question is what’s the capital of Kyrgyzstan, I just blurt out Bishkek before anyone else can even think, and I haven’t thought about Kyrgyzstan since 10th grade geography. When my friend asks me what the name of that side character in that 90s rom-com we watched once is, I pull it right up. But put a ticking clock and a grade in the mix, and suddenly 2+2 is a mystery.
I got this stupid piece of advice from an upperclassman once, she said “just stop caring so much, that’s why you blank”. Like that’s helpful. I spent 12 hours studying for this midterm. I skipped going to the concert my friend wanted me to go to last weekend to study. Of course I care. Why would I not care? It’s not like I can just flip a switch and not care. That’s the dumbest advice I’ve ever gotten. Another person told me to just breathe, like I don’t know how to breathe when I’m panicking. Yeah, thanks, I’ll just breathe my way to remembering what amylase is.
I did accidentally come up with one tiny thing that works sometimes, though. After that whole conflict theory disaster, I stopped panicking and staring at the question when I blank. Now I just close my eyes for 10 seconds, and I don’t try to remember the answer. I try to remember where I was when I learned it. What was I wearing? What did the room smell like? What color was the sticky note I wrote the answer on? For that enzyme question last week, I thought: I was on my couch, eating cold pepperoni pizza, that cat of mine was sitting on my notebook kneading it, I wrote the name on a blue sticky note next to the page. I thought what else did I write on that sticky note? Oh right, “breaks down starch, dumbass don’t forget this”. And then just like that, amylase popped into my head. It worked. That time. It didn’t work for my stats quiz two weeks ago, when I blanked on what a p-value measures. I stood in the shower after class, rinsing shampoo out of my hair, and that’s when I remembered. So it’s not a magic fix. It just works sometimes, which is better than never, I guess.
I still get mad about it, honestly. I still leave a test and walk straight to the vending machine, buy whatever overpriced soda they have, and stand there kicking the base while all the answers I couldn’t pull up come flooding in. I still have days where it drops my grade 10 points because I blanked on three easy questions I knew perfectly. I stopped beating myself up over it as much as I used to, though. I used to go back to my dorm and cry, tell myself I’m just bad at school, I should drop out. Now I just curse my brain for being a jerk, drink my soda, and move on. It’s not going anywhere, I don’t think. Even when I’m done with school, I bet I’ll still blank on the name of the person I’m introducing myself to at a work meeting, or forget what I came into the kitchen for when I’m mid errand. Some things just are what they are. The vending machine always gives me my soda, anyway. That’s something. (Word count: ~1120)
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