Wastage

Exams waste a huge amount of resources.

Based on the observations and rants of my dear soon-to-lose-her-sanity roommate, we have concluded the exams are a dreadful waste of resources.

First of all, exams wastes paper. To memorize the horrible amount of notes, we have to write. And to memorize 14 chapters of notes, we need to write a lot. To write a lot, we need A LOT of paper. Even by reusing paper which have been used on only one side, I still freak myself out with the amount of paper that I can drag my pen and pencil over. Can you imagine how many trees that have to be cut down just so that we students can take our exams?

Next, exams wastes electricity. C'mon, who doesn't burn the midnight fluorescent light when it is exam period? We keep the lights on from night until early morning to study. We leave the fan on 24/7 because we're in the house most of the time compared to when we have classes. We keep our laptops blaring with music and to have our daily dosage of facebook, youtube and blog hopping to destress and keep sane. The amount of electrical energy we waste could've powered a third world country.

Moving on to my next point, exams wastes water as well. Do you notice how much more liquid you seem to glug down when you are studying? I suppose that all the pouring over books and notes and words drains our bodily fluids faster than when we carry out our normal activities. I'm pretty sure the part that gets dry the fastest is the brain, thus the headaches (real or fake) that we experience when we stare too long at our notes. Yes, we waste water because of our stupid exams, and we forget about the pitiful people in other parts of the world who are dehydrating.

Finally, exams wastes food. Loads of it. As all of us know, we eat/consume/devour/put away/bite+chew+swallow a lot more food than usual during the exam period. Admit it, you have shamelessly sneaked that chocolate bar into your room, snuck out for a burger (or to Ghany), chewed away at biscuits, nibbled on chips, cooked the occasional maggi and drank mugs of mugs of milo or tea or coffee when you were studying. And the worst part is, it never seems to reach your tummy. You get hungry so much faster when you study. In fact, I'm a firm believer of judging how much you have studied by the calculating the frequency of your hunger pangs. Don't believe me? Try it yourself. Study your heart out for a few hours and feel the hunger clawing at your tummy after that. As mentioned, the food doesn't seem to reach our tummies, but yet we still eat. This means we are wasting food, not because we want to, but because we need to.

In conclusion, exams waste precious resources and should be abolished.