This post originally appeared on The Huffington Post, but I thought I may as well bring it over here too. It’s a slightly different article to most of my stuff on here, but I would love for you to check it out regardless and let me know your thoughts either there, here, or via info@haydenperno.com.
Click here to head straight there.
Excerpt:
I look up at the clock; 20 minutes left. If it wasn’t for the cold winter air within the hall, I’d surely be sweating. My leg starts bouncing, racing, my heel starts rapidly tapping the ground. I put my eyes to the paper, realizing that I certainly don’t have enough time to get it done. Nor do I have enough time to check it over, making sure that my overall score earnt throughout the semester isn’t completely destroyed by the weighting of this final time-pressured-memory-test exam.
The next 20 minutes flies by and a lady’s voice on the PA system rings out into the hall to break me from my state. “Pens down. Please stop writing”. I comply, putting my pen down and shaking my head, slightly in disbelief, and slightly in awe of how quick the past three hours went.
I hear the last ditch effort scribbles around me, the shuffling of papers, the sighs of relief, and witness the faces of people mouthing curse words across the room to their friends.
All of us, confined to our 80x40cm tables, prohibited to move or talk until the papers have been collected and counted, and our dismissal granted. Prisoners, so it would seem, enslaved to the education system. The very system that was founded in the 1800s. Long before people smiled in photos or women wore shorts, and far before a supercomputer the size of your hand, with more power than what was required to get a rocket to the moon in 1969, in the pocket of your favourite blue jeans…
Click here to read the rest of it.