50 Painful Minutes
- 22nd April, 2007

Well, I am not addicted to writing blogs, but thought of sharing my experience of those 50 painful minutes…
 I rarely sit the whole 50 minutes allotted but in this exam, I had to. No, there wasn’t any compulsion but a friend of mine, sitting next to me, forced me to, though we both were empty - headed.
Let’s start from the eve of exam day. Time was 9:30pm and my room partner woke me up for dinner and of course because of exam. He is a computer science student, so he wasn’t having any exam and was reading a novel (well, I say “history books” to the type of novels he reads). After washing my face, I went to have my dinner which was as usual yucky. I returned to my room and searched for the prescribed book and the handout of the subject, Digital Signal Processing.
“What’s the portion for tomorrow’s exam?” my words touched Abhisek’s ears. I always wondered about the missing ‘h’ in his name. Anyways, there were 5 long chapters to be covered.
Morning 7:30am, half an hour left for exam to begin. My room partner woke me up and described how I started snoring on the book. “Man, you slept for almost 12 hours waking in between only for dinner”. I wondered on what he said because he could have woken me up. Thinking about the exam, I headed to brush my teeth and get ready. I arrived 5 minutes before the time and was waiting to enter the seminar hall. Yes, seminar hall, because that is our exam hall too, with a capacity of 150 students.
I chose the 2nd last bench of the 3rd row to sit. The question paper and answer booklet were already there. I thought, “The game begins now” while writing my name and ID number on the booklet. The exam had begun and I started gazing at the question paper counting the number of questions I can attempt, except the objective part. ZERO, came the answer.
By that time, an instructor came up to me to sign the booklet and gave me the attendance list to sign. I signed my longest-time-taking-sign and handed the list to the instructor. I knew I had enough time to spare. I started attempting the objective part. Damn, there were only “Fill in the blanks”, all 10 of them. I attempted 5, though the chances of my answers being correct were nil.
“Now, what shall I do?” looking sideways as I thought. Was I searching for someone who could help? No, I never cheat, really!! Though, I help, if I can. I hid the answers with question paper and acted as if I was thinking on a question. I decided to attempt at least 1 question, and hence found one, which I thought, can help score me some marks. I gathered some data from my memory and started writing. Wow, I had written a full page on it, still I had a doubt on my answer.
10 minutes were over, and now, no work to do. I started looking around again and surprisingly found that I wasn’t the only one sitting idle. Almost, everybody in the hall was like me. I started singing a song, hahahaha, of course in my mind re.
Then came the faculty who was conducting the exam. I don’t know, why does he always peep into the answer sheets? I again started to act as if was thinking deep trying to remember the correct formula. Uff!! Why does he always have to come and stand by my side? Though he didn’t say anything, he kept standing by side hoping I would show him what I have written. After a while he had to leave unsuccessful.
 Now, by this time, almost all students had stopped writing, but surprisingly, nobody had submitted the paper. Normally, I am the first person to leave followed by some more, but today I had to sit. I started getting a call from somebody, though my mobile was in silent mode. I left that ringing in my pocket, but still the vibration was bugging me. Oh my God!! Almost 25 minutes still left. Why have they given 50 minutes for such a tough paper? The next 15 minutes were boring and I almost went to sleep thinking of different matters.
 “Extra sheet, please” This sound woke me up, which came from the seat in front. He was one of the toppers in the subject. Almost everybody was staring at the guy, as the instructor came and handed him the extra sheet. I felt a little thirsty, so got up and went for the water which was kept on a table at the end of the hall. “10 minute left”, I heard the announcement as I drank the water. I returned to my seat and started wondering that still nobody has submitted the paper.
I was becoming restless now because sitting there doing nothing was boring. I heard a whisper, “question number 3”. Was that for me? A nudge at me back confirmed the answer. I gave him a gesture of denial by shaking my head.
Another boring 5 minutes passed by and I started to read my answers. That was it, I wasn’t going to sit anymore and I started to keep my pens and calculator in my pocket. Just then, one student stood up and handed his paper to the instructor. Oh my God!! At the same instant, he was followed by 30 more people submitting their papers. Hahahaha, all of them were waiting for someone to leave the hall first. Then it was my turn to end the 50 painful minutes…… I got up, handed over the paper and the first thing that came into my mind is to go and catch some sleep.

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Article Written by Mahip Singh Saluja