Yes, it's that time again - it's exam season! Oh, how absolutely *thrilling* is that feeling when, with my intestines shutting down and plunging down into my legs, the adrenaline surges through all the brain pathways where it really shouldn't be and I have to sit down and try to think rationally while a small devil-like creature on my shoulder chants "You're going to FAIL, you're going to FAAA-AAILLLL."

OK, that was surreal, so now I'll get on to what I was actually going to say. Yesterday I did two General Studies exams (at AS Level), these being the Cultural and Social papers. This would not actually be a problem normally, given that I care rather less about General Studies than I do about the morality of phytoplankton, but the examiners had seen fit to give us possibly THE WORST cultural paper in the history of mankind. This consisted of one article, entitled something like "In search of 'cool'", and a load of questions, the first of which was "What would be your definition of cool?" I mean, how on EARTH are you supposed to answer that? As a deeply cynical person, I just couldn't help letting myself go, eventually indicating that although it was quite difficult to define "cool," it was much easier to define "cringe-making", ie the contents of the article.

The paper went on to ask a series of other questions, relating to advertising, the National Lottery, and mobile text messaging. What do they expect me to do? These are subjects about which I cannot HELP being cynical, for goodness' sake. I just really hope that I have a marker who is receptive to humour and sarcasm, or my teachers will be asking me rather searching questions...

Si-"The qston on txt msging gve me plnT of opptnT 2 B srcstic, I cn tll U"-gi