My eldest daughter is having her mock IGCSE exams for the next few weeks. I’ve taken on the role of her personal chauffeur to ensure she arrives on time. Sure, having a personal driver might sound posh, but trust me, I don’t envy her—especially seeing how stressed out she is.
Exams and I also share a long history of mutual loathing. Take my SPM exams, for example. They were nothing short of a dramatic horror show. After just one paper, I stumbled home feeling like roadkill, only to discover I had chickenpox.
With chickenpox, I had fever dreams of epic proportions—a psychedelic journey where quadratic equations tangoed with geographical formations. At one point, I’m fairly certain Tunku Abdul Rahman was trying to teach me calculus but I was too preoccupied with pox scars ruining my youthful visage to pay attention.
When I was lucid, I was haunted by the specter of repeating Form Five and retaking those wretched exams. Thankfully, divine intervention—or, more accurately, years of neglect in flood mitigation infrastructure investments in Kelantan and Terengganu—came to my rescue. Severe flooding caused the Ministry of Education to postpone the remaining papers for ten glorious days, giving me just enough time to recover and eventually perform well in the rest of the exams.
But the trauma lingered. To this day, I’m haunted by recurring nightmares where I’m disastrously unprepared for an exam—usually in some grueling science subject. In these dreams, I’m panicking, staring blankly at the questions, unable to recall even the basics. The panic quickly morphs into self-loathing as I berate myself for not putting in the time and effort to revise these topics in advance.
Then, dream-me tries to rationalize the failure, concluding that I didn’t revise because I was too busy preparing for a quarterly business review. That’s when the epiphany hits: if I’m working on a business review, why on earth am I still taking exams? At that moment, a wave of sweet relief washes over me as I realize—I’ve escaped. I’m already working, and the exam demons can go find someone else to torment.
Perhaps lingering exam traumas exacerbated by these recurring nightmares explains why I’ve become obsessively meticulous when preparing for major meetings in my professional life. The same dread of being caught unprepared drives me to triple-check every slide, mentally rehearse pitches on an endless loop and to anticipate every possible curveball scenario.
My team, bless them, has learned to brace themselves for my review sessions ahead of these meetings. But my intentions are pure: I just want to ensure none of us walks into a meeting unarmed. My goal is to over-prepare everyone so that no one has to live through my nightmare.That said, my team should really be grateful that my recurring nightmare isn’t about being stark naked in public. I can’t bare to think how I’d prepare them for that.