That Time I Blanked On a Midterm And Still Think About It Sometimes
October 2019, Bio 101 midterm, third row from the back of the lecture hall. The desk had a lopsided heart carved into it with a pair of initials I didn’t recognize, and the whole room smelled like the lemon Pledge the janitor always mopped with on Saturday mornings. I got there 15 minutes early, flipped through my neon notes one last time, quizzed my study group friend Mia on glycolysis in the hallway, nailed all four steps. I even had an extra peppermint in my jacket pocket for focus, just in case. I felt ready.
Then the professor handed out the tests, I flipped mine to the first page, and the very first question was “Name the four primary steps of glycolysis.” That’s it. Just gone. Nothing. My brain went quiet, like someone had flipped a switch and turned all the lights off. I could picture the neon pink index card I’d written that question on, I could feel the edge of the card between my fingers from flipping it so many times, but I couldn’t read what I’d written on the back. It was just a smudge.
I told myself to breathe, that this was normal, it’d come back. But it didn’t. My palms started sweating so bad the edge of the test paper went damp, the peppermint got stuck to the roof of my tongue, and the guy next to me was clicking his pen so fast and so loud I wanted to stab my eraser into his arm. I couldn’t move my hand enough to even write one word, my pulse was thumping so hard I could hear it over the pen clicking. I ended up raising my hand anyway, voice all wobbly, and asked to go to the bathroom. I just needed to get out, walk around, reset. The professor gave me that tight little smile that says “I know you’re gonna go cheat with your friend in the hallway” but she let me go anyway.
I walked down the hall, my sneakers squeaking on the cold tile, muttering the question under my breath over and over. Splashed cold water on my neck in the bathroom, stared at my own pink, panicky face in the mirror, and still nothing. That girl who always sits in the front row, the one who brings a proper leather binder and highlights her notes with four different colors, walked in, saw me muttering to myself, and backed out slow like I was having a full blown breakdown. Which I guess I kind of was.
I got a B- on that test, for the record. It wasn’t a fail, it didn’t tank my GPA, I still got into the public health program I wanted a couple years later. It wasn’t even that big of a deal, in the grand scheme of things. But I still think about that blank feeling all the time. It pops up at the weirdest moments, now that I don’t even take regular tests anymore. Last month my boss asked me what the total Q3 marketing budget number was, and I’d sent her the spreadsheet with that exact number three hours earlier. I just stared at her, and couldn’t think of a single digit. Just blank. Same tight chest, same white noise in my head, same feeling like someone pulled the plug on all the information I definitely stored 10 minutes prior.
Everyone always says this happens because you didn’t study enough, right? Or you’re just too stressed, you need to relax more. That’s such garbage. I studied more for that midterm than any other test I took in all four years of college. I skipped the Lambda Chi fall party that everyone I knew was going to, I turned down free front row tickets to the show my cousin’s band was playing that weekend, I ate cold instant miso soup for dinner three nights in a row because I didn’t want to waste 20 minutes cooking. I knew the material. It just… left. For no reason I could ever pin down.
A couple months ago, my 16-year-old cousin called me, crying a little, because she’d blanked on her permit test twice already. She said she aces every practice test, she can list right of way rules in her sleep when she’s hanging out on my couch, but as soon as she sits down in front of that DMV computer, she can’t remember what a yield sign means. I didn’t tell her to just relax. I hate when people say that, it’s the most useless thing you can say to someone who’s already panicking. I told her what I figured out after that glycolysis midterm: when it goes blank, stop staring at the thing you can’t remember. Staring just makes it worse, like squeezing water harder trying to hold onto it. Just skip it. Go to the last question, or the easiest one, the one you know you know even when your brain’s being stupid. Answer that one. Then the next. Let your brain dig up the hard stuff while you’re not looking. She did that, passed on her third try, texted me a blurry picture of her permit covered in heart emojis.
I still get that blank feeling all the time. Last week I was introducing a friend to a coworker I’ve worked with for a year and a half, and I forgot their name. Just completely, gone. Same old test-day blank. It’s awkward, it’s annoying, I still walk away kicking myself for it afterwards. I don’t have some big fancy lesson about it, or a trick that works 100% of the time. Sometimes your brain just decides to take a five minute break right when you need it most, I guess. All you can do is go splash some cold water on your neck, skip the hard question for a minute, and hope it comes back before the time runs out. And if it doesn’t? Well, it’s almost never the end of the world. That B- didn’t kill me. The forgotten name just gets a laugh and an apology and we move on. It’s just… one of those things, I guess.
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