Non Compos Mentis

I am recovering from my trauma from my Financial Accounting examination. I suffered yet another mental collapse. When I flipped through the paper I thought survival was guaranteed. How wrong I was!

Throughout my ordeal I found myself in a trance. For the first 25 minutes or so my fingers werer semi-thawed (I spent two hours in this ice-cave of a library for some last minute mugging and had my blood frozen as a result), and for the rest of the period I was slipping in and out of reality. Stray throughts kept popping up in my head. Music played, my consciousness phased in and out. I struggled to maintain concentration but it was an uphill struggle.

I cleared the first question well enough, but for the next three I faltered. I suffered the sort of mental collapse that a team which has taken a three goal lead only to concede four in the last ten minutes would feel. I suddenly couldn't remember where to place the accrued transactions in the journal. Instead of putting the adjusted figures into the existing columns, I added a few more columns. Granted, while I screwed up this question it wasn't a complete loss. A few points here and then, and hopefully, no penalization for writing rubbish and I might sneak a few vital points.

By this time, my mental fortitude was on the verge of disintegration. Wave after wave of desperation assaulted me. I had difficulty remembering what I just wrote. Like a common animal I existed purely on an instinctual level. My pen scribbed, I crossed out, rewrote. Let not your right hand know what the left is doing. Easy matter! The interface between my brain and my hand broke down incessantly, each reknitting increasingly tenuous. I would have sworn I was possessed by some idiot angel, but I am an atheist.

The third question was an absolutely stinker. Ordinarily, inventory methods would not have fazed me, but in this situation I was left grasping at thin air. Although there are two types of inventory stocktaking decisions, the examples in the textbook were worked using only one methodology. Left with no alternative I answered as what I had practiced. I might have gotten it perfectly right - it's all or nothing. A penalty situation. Either I score or I miss. No in-between, Beautiful yet potentially tragic. Winner takes all. A wonderful dichotomy. I could have been thinking too much - look! I'm waxing pathetic! - the two decisions may be purely rhetorical where accounting is concerned, but I feel frustrated at the way I blew this golden opportunity to seal it.

Understand what I just wrote? I don't. Do you?

I had less than 30 minutes for the last question and I just wrote whatever I could conjure up. I misplaced a couple of transactions but I couldn't really help it. I got the format down and anything I put in right was a bonus. With three minutes remaining I realized I still haven't done the theory part of the question. Although it carried only a paltry five marks it looked considerably more promising on the cost-benefit scale than the 20 mark cash flow statement I just scribbed. I wrote some crap and hopefully it will secure the precious point(s) I need to put myself through. I now place my hopes on the theory portion of the paper. It consisted of only around a fifth of the total marks but every shit counts. May my bullshit smells nice enough to get me ten marks or more out of the 19, 20 on offer.

Life is ironic and a bitch at that. To think I had ranted at having theory questions in the paper, only to rely on them now. I learned about 'creative accounting' dishonest businessmen use, only to hope that the marker will indulge, from an 'ethical' point of view, some 'creative marking and accounting' when he/she grades my paper.

One down, two more to go. I am not going to touch my books tonight. I have had enough pain to last me for the next 12 hours.