IF the month of May can make your stomach flip and cause little beads of perspiration to break out across your furrowed brow you still, like many of us, suffer from examinitis. It is a severe reaction to the fact that deep down part of your subconscious is telling you you should be revising RIGHT NOW.
No, it doesn't matter that you are middle aged, chief executive of British Gas and haven't been in an exam situation for two decades, it will creep up on you when you least expect it. I see it as proof positive that too much swotting at a young age is bad for you. Or could it be that I just left everything so late (or was simply a bit dim) that I associate this time of year with non-stop desperate, terror-filled hours of cramming.
All I'm saying is... get used to it, it will never go. Catching a glimpse of the expiry date on a pot of yogurt that states best before May 16 sends me straight back to 1982. I might have had a fresh perm and the latest Bananarama single on my Dansette but I was still no closer to knowing my periodic table which, according to my perfectly designed revision timetable, I should have mastered some time around Easter Monday (when of course I was too busy designing the revision timetable).
The clammy feeling only lasts for a split second and then I realise I have to take the kids to school and pay the mortgage and that I actually got away without ever learning the periodic table or reading The Mayor of Casterbridge in its entirety.
And it also means I never, EVER take this time of year, now it is entirely free of individual desks, set a foot apart and three hour tests of writing stamina that brought up a nasty blister on my pen finger, for granted.
But take heed, there could actually be worse ahead. The terror of sitting a paper is nothing compared to the buttock-clenching horror of being the parent of a small child taking a dancing exam.
If I had failed my history A-level my mother could have crossed her arms and said "you should have worked harder". If my daughter fails her ballet it will be because the hair bun I did with trembling fingers came out, her tights were laddered or her leotard wasn't regulation pink, all things in my portfolio of worry and responsibility.
The panic of checking your child to make sure she looks exactly like everyone else's as she steps into the room is even worse than discussing what you put down in your maths exam with the swotty kids who always carried briefcases – it's designed to make you feel inadequate ("what do you mean square root?" has simply been replaced by "red ribbon? I thought it was supposed to be blue!")
Perhaps we do these things to make our pulses race quicker, to provide the thrill of achievement we once enjoyed for ourselves, the satisfaction of a hard-won success?
What I know is that teenage exam angst that once triggered spots and introspection is now alive and well and calling itself high blood pressure, IBS and impending ulcers. And perhaps If I had paid a bit more attention to the periodic table back then I would now be a chemist and able to self-medicate myself out of this crisis.
