Exam Fever

Well it's that time of year again when a batch of young people get down to knuckle cracking, stress inducing exams, and thus hopefully taking their first steps into a world much different from the one they know. A brand new and often daunting phase of their lives: University.
Whether they do GCSE or KCSE this time is marked by pure stress and it is this stress and mounting pressure to succeed that leads many to cheat.
I must admit that although I never did it but I will try to explain why some feel the need to, so bare with me...
Exam feaver is a term that is used to explain the sheer panic that greets a student before, and even during a paper. At this point some students even draw a complete blank.
Again allow me to admit if you will, when I was sitting my GCSE's and GCE's a few years ago I had probably the worst case of exam fever ever, my stomach was in knots and I went into a cold sweat when I saw my first paper which just happened to be English Lit... to make the long story short I failed it miserably. Although I was under a considerable amount of pressure to do well I did not give in to the very tempting idea of being a cheat.
For one thing I knew that if I tried I would be caught... I am not skilled in the art of scheming and besides it would have taken me twice the energy to do a forgery as it did to read the material- copious as it seemed.
Cheating takes infinite skill, cunning, devious creativity and a whole lot of thought and planning.
First you would have to acquire or steal the exam questions, then prepare answers for those questions and to top it off you'd have to think of creative places to hide the illicit evidence from the ever prying eyes of the invigilator.
Maybe I didn't cheat because I could not possibly handle the stress of possibly being discovered; the fear of being expelled quickly put any dark ideas to a permanent grave. The kids today are much smarter than I ever was. For example I never would have thought of having a network of friends or people feed me answers to questions via text message. At this juncture I must thank my mum - who was sane enough to give me my first mobile only after I was done with school.
There are various ways to get information past those invigilators at the door and the most common one is at the back of the shirt of the uniform, paper inside the tube of a biro pen, stuffing bits of paper in braziers, socks and shoes and in their neatly coifed hair!
If you thought the epidemic started and ended with high school you are sorely mistaken... it has wormed its way into college and University as well.
Take a student who is accustomed to his/her old cheating ways; they will not break the habit but only use more sophisticated means to get themselves to that elusive passing grade or that shiny bright 'A'.
This was and will always be a thorn in the examining body's side- a thorn that desperately needs to be removed from its flesh.
And so it is,that, every year at a time like this that exam fever grips the final year students and they find themselves tempted more than ever before delve deep into their own little dark sides...