EXAM PRACTICE

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Essay by a CAE student

IN FEAR OF A BLANK PAGE

By Josefina Guller (CAE - 2002)

You enter the examination room, sit at your desk and look down: in front of you lies a white page and a task to fulfill. You look up. The invigilator glances at the clock on the wall and proceeds to write down the starting and finishing time on the blackboard. The finishing time. The “dead” line. The time when you will have no more time. You look down again. The defying white page is still there, untouched.

Petrifying before a blank page is not a rare experience. This syndrome is commonly suffered by students who face an exam or a task which contains a deadline. The fact of knowing you must comply with it within a certain time limit leads to what is called a “blocking”. A blocking consists of a mental lagoon, an empty mind, a wall that stops the flow of ideas.

Facing a white page is no easy battle to win. Therefore, training must begin at the earliest stage possible. Learning how to bend a sword ( or a pen) and developing the necessary skills to do so properly will be of much help, but it is practice what will grant you victory and allow you to shatter the “blank” enemy.

It is my belief that this syndrome, from  which, unfortunately, I suffer periodically, can be cured. Moreover, it can disappear without leaving trace. But this demands an enormous effort and the will to succeed ( on the part of the sufferer).

Should you find yourself in the blockers’ group, do try to overcome this fear of blank pages. It is a skill you will need in the future, for we live in a world full of unwritten paper.

And remember: “We have nothing to fear

but fear itself.” (G. Roosevelt)

Josefina Guller was a student at St. Trinnean’s, an excellent one…but Writing sometimes worried her. Here’s what she wrote about it