100th post

'Twas the night before exams,
The school hall quiet, waiting,
Across the lands students cram,
Just one more night of coping.

Coping with stresses, worries,
And the oh so high expectations,
All can recite the same stories,
tips for surviving examinations.

The school grounds for once, silent,
Hallways not echoing the clamour,
Teenage chatter, teachers' patience,
But tonight, it held no drama.

Except in the order of the desks,
That filled the hall and classes,
Once a year, not more, not less,
Students came and sat for those tests.

The tests that would maybe decide,
the paths to be trodden for life,
creating the fears that reside,
cutting as sharply as any knife.

But students are resilient creatures,
when dawn comes, and papers distributed,
they suddenly exibit different features,
panic hidden with scribblings that demostrated ...

the endurance that comes with such matters
the attempts to be consise and coherent
when all that is remembered is just snatches
of knowledge, techniques given in a torrent.

Two years is short and fleeting
it never felt so at that time
but now that its almost ending
i very nearly want to pine

all that is left is just memories
and three months later
a slip of paper.