अग्निपरीक्षा

[Don’t worry, I’m not writing the whole article in Hindi, mainly because obviously I cannot write in my ancestor’s language now for the past twenty-five years. And yes, that's how your seat in the exam hall looks like figuratively.]

In the Ramayana, अग्निपरीक्षा - Agni Pariksha, is the fire ordeal that Sita undergoes to prove her chastity and innocence to her husband Rama. In the case of the final fellowship exam, it will be the fire that might burn you to the ground, Constantine style! (Anti hero in DC comics and also a great movie featuring Keanu Reeves.)

Examinations

The noble tradition of testing whether you’ve absorbed knowledge—or if you've perfected the art of last-minute cramming. Let’s take a brief stroll through the history of these cruel and unusual practices.

The initial format was the oral exam. Ancient Sumerians, Egyptians, and Greeks used this format to test a person’s knowledge of their sacred texts. The "exam" was delivered face-to-face, with a high priest or philosopher asking you to recite sacred scrolls or wax poetic on the meaning of life. Then came the Dark Ages, when exams were really dark—both literally and figuratively. Imagine sitting in a cold, candle-lit stone room while a monk or a disgruntled scholar demanded you recite theological dogma until your brain melted. If you got one word wrong, you were likely sent to the catacombs or tortured. But on the plus side, you got to spend time with God, who, judging by the medieval theology, might have been more interested in your mental fortitude than your actual knowledge.

With the printing press came the glorious invention of the written exam. It was the Renaissance, and all of a sudden, everyone was writing down their thoughts. But no one actually thought this would make exams any easier. As the world industrialized (1800s), so did the exam. Now, exams became efficient, because nothing says “progress” like a one-size-fits-all assessment where everyone is crammed into a sterile room, hoping their mind doesn't completely shut down after six hours of multiple-choice questions. The idea? Create a system that could test as many students as possible in the least amount of time. A nice, impersonal process. If you failed, don’t worry—you're just another cog in the machine, and we’ll try again next year. By the 20th century, exams were formalized into what we know today—complete with standardized tests that could determine your fate. The multiple-choice question entered the scene, giving rise to the most terrifying words any student could hear: Negative marking for wrong answers!

As the world embraced testing as the ultimate measure of intelligence, the pressure to succeed increased exponentially. The education system had become a high-stakes game of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”, with none of the prize money and all of the existential dread.

The SATs, GCSEs, GCEs, Bsc, Msc and MMeds—each one more soul-sucking than the last. And let’s not even get into how the sheer weight of these exams has since become the leading cause of anxiety attacks, caffeine addiction, drug abuse and dystopian daydreams.

Want a career in law? Better know the answer to which answer is the most correct.

For medicine? Memorize the entire human body, plus the side effects of every medication known to man. Oh, also mug up some weird crazy fact you will never ever need in your career.

The 20th century perfected the art of making students feel like their entire life’s worth would be boiled down to a single number or letter on a sheet of paper.

And here we are, in the modern day. Exams are online! That’s right, you can take a test in your pyjamas(if you feel like it), surrounded by half-empty coffee mugs and a panic-stricken sense of impending doom.

So, what have we learned from this evolution of exams? Well, for one, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Humans still manage to create convoluted systems of testing that stress us out, make us feel inadequate, and potentially ruin our ability to function as social beings.

It is currently pre-Exam season for most of the fellowships in South Africa. It is like nature's cruel joke on aspiring medical specialists where the adrenaline of panic meets the paralysis of procrastination, resulting in a spectacular display of … absolutely no progress.

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail”—but what they don’t tell you is that staring at the wall for six hours also counts as preparation. After all, it’s where all the good existential crises happen.

Let’s catch up with our three best buddies also:

Anxiety, Procrastination and Panic!

Anxiety is like the brain’s Drama Queen- Imagine your brain has a smoke detector that’s supposed to alert you when there’s a fire. Now, what if it freaks out every time you burn toast or boil water too loudly? That’s anxiety! It starts with the amygdala, your brain’s personal security guard. It’s great at detecting danger—like a lion charging at you—but sometimes it overreacts. Instead of lions, it now panics over emails, deadlines, or that mildly awkward conversation. Your amygdala screams, “DO SOMETHING!” while flooding your body with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Your heart races, your muscles tense up, and your brain dives into “what-if” mode:

What if I fail?

Meanwhile, your prefrontal cortex (the logical, calm part of your brain) tries to step in, saying, “Relax, it’s just an exam. You’re fine.” But anxiety doesn’t listen. It’s too busy catastrophizing everything.

As Mark Twain once said:

 “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”

The medical reality? Chronic anxiety can mess with your HPA axis (Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis), keeping your stress levels permanently high. Over time, this can impact your sleep, immune system, and even digestion.

As the old saying goes, “Worrying is like paying interest on a debt you don’t even owe.”

 

Then comes the Master of doing nothing while thinking about everything- Procrastination.

Instead of freaking out, your brain just shrugs and says, “Let’s deal with this later.” It’s your brain’s avoidance strategy for hard, boring, or scary tasks.

When faced with stress, your prefrontal cortex (the planning, rational part of your brain) hands over control to the amygdala. The amygdala, being dramatic as usual, says, “Let’s avoid the stress entirely! Netflix anyone?”

Here’s how it plays out:

You look at your task and feel uncomfortable.

Instead of pushing through, you distract yourself—scrolling Instagram, reorganizing your spice rack, or Googling “how to be more productive.”

The distraction gives you a quick hit of dopamine, your brain’s reward chemical. That little boost reinforces your habit of avoiding the task. From a medical perspective, procrastination taps into your brain’s mesolimbic reward system. Tasks with delayed rewards (like studying or writing a report) don’t excite the dopamine system as much as instant rewards (like binge-watching a show or snacking).

 

What Can You Do?

Practice mindfulness: Deep breathing or meditation calms the amygdala.

Cognitive reframing: Challenge your catastrophic thoughts. As they say, “Don’t believe everything you think!”

Exercise! It burns off excess cortisol.

Break tasks into smaller chunks. Starting is half the battle.

Reward yourself for finishing tasks—your brain loves a good treat!

As author Gretchen Rubin said:

“The dread of doing a task uses up more time and energy than doing the task itself.”

 

Let’s now meet the King of all disasters, buddy number 3, Panic!

Panic is supposed to make you productive, right? Wrong. It’s the gateway drug to procrastination. One minute you’re thinking, “I’ll just check this one thing online,” and the next, you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole so deep, you know the feeding habits of anglerfish but still can’t remember what FETO in congenital diaphragmatic hernia means. Truly inspiring stuff. Let’s face it, if there’s one thing exam panic is good for, it’s convincing yourself that the perfect time to start studying is later. Later is where all the magic happens, where you’re suddenly smarter, more focused, and somehow know everything through osmosis and diffusion. You feel ‘Bradley Cooper’ vibes in Limitless. It’s also where you fail your exams in the medical field. Yeah, the last sentence felt like a headbutt by a water buffalo, isn’t it? Snorts.

The ‘pièce de résistance’: The all-nighter. Fuelled by caffeine(and possibly also other stuff we don’t want to venture into) and a vague sense of doom, you cram 3 years of material in one night, only to realize by 3 a.m. that you’ve learned more about your body’s ability to survive on coffee than the actual subject matter. It’s at this point you accept your fate with the solemn grace of a man seeing a wounded lion in front of him. Well, you don’t accept it. You still shit your pants off and run, just a wounded lion enjoys the meal more then.

The moral of the story? Panic isn’t your enemy—your belief in “later” is. So put down the highlighter, close the FB Insta app, and open the book. Or don’t- “Why focus on the problem when you can distract yourself with literally everything else?”

The bells ring and then, D-day finally gatecrashes you!

There’s nothing like exam day to turn the most skeptical among us into devout believers. (FCA part 1 still gives me PTSD vibes.) As you sit there clutching the laptop (and your last shreds of dignity), you suddenly invoke every god, goddess, ancestor, and even your neighbour’s dog for good measure, because hey—desperate times call for desperate prayers.

Your inner monologue goes something like this:

"Dear Lord, Allah, Shiva, Jesus, Zeus, Thor—whoever’s on shift today, please guide my fingers on the keyboard. Also, great-great-grandpa, I know you didn’t survive wars for me to fail this exam, so, um… please help?"

You promise every deity all you’ve got:

‘I’ll never procrastinate again.’ (A blatant lie.)

‘I’ll donate to charity every month.’ (With what money, though?)

‘I will look at all the other women as if they are my sister and mother’ (Yeah, if I was God listening to that one, I would snort all my breakfast out through my nose and ask you - you meant stepsis and stepmom probably?!). Believe it or not, Step-everything is kind of the go-to nowadays for a lot of the ‘scenarios’. It makes you ponder about how warped our mind is…

Anyway… Suddenly, the absurdity of your prayer hits you. These gods have cosmic duties like saving the planet, smiting evildoers, and orchestrating sunsets—and here you are begging for divine intervention on ventilator graphics or West lung zones?

You glance around and realize you’re not alone in this universal plea for miracles. The room is a cathedral of silent bargains:

The guy in the front row is whispering to the ceiling.

The girl next to you is holding her pen like a rosary.

And you? You’re mentally adding “Please, just don’t let me write total nonsense” to your list of requests.

When the exam begins, you think, “This is it. My faith will guide me.” But the first question hits, and suddenly you’re reconsidering your spirituality:

"Dear Gods, why have you forsaken me???"

By the end, you’re on autopilot, thinking, “Well, at least I tried. If I fail, I’ll just say it was fate—or poor Wi-Fi between me and the divine hotline.”

And as you leave the room, a very tiny voice in your head whispers, “Next time, maybe start with studying instead of summoning an entire pantheon.”

 

Final Thought

Your brain is trying to protect you, but sometimes it just… overdoes it. Anxiety, panic, and procrastination all come from ancient survival mechanisms that don’t quite fit modern life.

Life throws a lot at us—exams, deadlines or the existential crisis of whether pineapple belongs on pizza—and our brains sometimes go into overdrive trying to cope. But don’t worry, you’ve got this!

As the wise Yoda once said:

“Do or do not. There is no try.”

You’re doing better than you think. Everyone feels anxious, procrastinates, and panics sometimes—it’s part of being human. The key is to keep showing up, even when your brain is being a total diva.

And remember, this too shall pass.

 

What about a Crash Course in Studying "Aids"?

To survive, students often turn to a buffet of brain boosters: Coffee, ritalin, coffee, cannabis, coffee and any nootropic they think might squeeze a few more IQ points out of their tired brains. And coffee.

 

Coffee is the MVP of exam prep.

Need to pull an all-nighter? Coffee.

Can’t understand page 27 of your notes? Coffee.

Need an excuse to take another break? Coffee.

For Noobs, caffeine works by blocking adenosine receptors, the brain chemical that makes you sleepy. It’s like putting duct tape over your brain’s “Tired” button and saying, “We’re not done yet!”

But be careful: too much coffee and you’ll start vibrating like a phone on silent. Common side effects include heart palpitations, jittery hands, and yelling “I CAN’T FAIL!” at your dog.

 

Ritalin: The Borrowed Genius

Ritalin, or methylphenidate, is like coffee’s overachieving cousin. Designed for people with ADHD, it helps focus by increasing dopamine and norepinephrine levels in the brain. But during exam season, it becomes the unofficial mascot of desperate students everywhere.

Some people swear it makes them superhuman. Others just stare at their laptops for 3 hours deciding on a font.

Medical Fun Fact : Ritalin doesn’t magically make you smarter—it just helps you focus on whatever you’re doing. If that’s scrolling TikTok, guess what? You’ll become REALLY good at it. Taking Ritalin without ADHD is like wearing glasses when you don’t need them. Sure, you’ll see something, but what?

 

Cannabis: The Chill Route (For Better or Worse)

Then there’s cannabis, which some students claim “helps them focus” or “reduces stress” while studying. Translation: they took one puff and spent the next two hours contemplating why pencils have erasers. Cannabis affects the brain’s endocannabinoid system, altering memory, attention, and decision-making. This can either make you feel super creative or leave you staring at a blank notebook wondering why exams even exist. Spoiler: the latter is more likely.

Medical Fun Fact: THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, is a known memory disruptor. Great for forgetting embarrassing moments, not so great for memorizing 200 pages of Anaesthesia facts.

 

Energy Drinks: Coffee’s Over-Caffeinated synthetic Evil Twin

Energy drinks are the rebellious younger siblings of coffee. With slogans like “Unleash the Beast” or “Red Bull Gives You Wings,” they promise to turn you into an unstoppable studying machine.

In reality, they’re just sugar and caffeine in a can. Sure, they wake you up, but at what cost? Too many and you’ll be wide awake at 3am wondering if you’re having a heart attack or if it’s just tachycardia. Or well, you will be like a squirrel on steroids- moving a lot and doing nothing!

Energy drinks don’t give you wings—they give you regret and heartburn.”

 

“Natural” Brain Boosters: From Herbal Teas to Fish Oil

For the health-conscious crowd, there’s always the “natural” route: green tea, ginseng, or fish oil supplements. These won’t turn you into Einstein overnight, but hey, at least they won’t make your heart explode.

Green tea has a bit of caffeine and L-theanine, which can improve focus without the jitters.

Fish oil may boost brain health... if you’ve been taking it consistently for months (so, not helpful for cramming).

Ginseng? Sure, if you like expensive urine.

 

And, let’s not forget Snacks: The Unsung Heroes

Don’t underestimate the power of snacks. Your brain needs fuel, and nothing says “academic genius” like a steady diet of chips, chocolate, and whatever’s left in the fridge.

Healthy snacks like nuts, berries, and whole grains actually improve cognitive function. But let’s be realistic—stress eating an entire pizza feels WAY better during an all-nighter.

 

The Bottom Line: Pick Your Poison Wisely

Studying for exams is hard. Whether you choose coffee, Ritalin, cannabis, or just sheer panic, remember: nothing beats actual preparation, sleep, and a balanced diet. But if you’re going to cheat the system a little, do it safely, and maybe skip the Red Bull-Ritalin-cannabis cocktail (your heart will thank you).

You are the brave safari hunter setting out into the vast, untamed wilderness of your brain. Only, instead of elusive cheetahs, you’re chasing down facts that are so well-hidden they may as well be endangered species. Your brain is a dense jungle, filled with dense foliage, labyrinthine paths, and the occasional tree that screams, "You’re never going to remember this."

And, of course, you’re completely unprepared for the hunt. 

Bonus points- you have a knife as a weapon.

Well, as the great philosopher Dory from Finding Nemo would say,

“Just keep swimming.”

Or in this case, ‘Just keep studying.’

 You’ve got this!