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Subject: Poem - Final Exam


Author:
Heather
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Date Posted: 10:01:32 12/18/01 Tue
 Final Exam


So I’m sitting here, preparing for my
exam, thinking about how you’re preparing
for yours. And I despise that word, exam;
it’s so invasive, so impersonally
personal. Maybe the word final is
better—but no. Anything is better
than final.

Epistemic privilege. It’s an
interesting concept. I almost don’t
mind studying this stuff. Keeps my mind off
other things. Like you, and your final—no,
your exam—and how much worse yours is than
mine, because unhappy results for me
aren’t the end of the world.

I go back to my notes on feminist
research methods and play The Sound of Silence
over and over and over again
because it’s mournful and I’m mournful. And
I stand in front of the mirror and see
my mother’s face, and her mother’s face, and
tears swim in all our eyes.
Exams suck.

And then my exam and your exam, and
when I flip over the page and see that
the question on epistemic privilege
isn’t there, I cry, wiping my nose on
my sleeve and looking helplessly at the
throng of professionally unhelpful
proctors who mill about, supervisors
in a hospital room of stress and silence.
Proctors and doctors, they’re all the same and
the whole world is slowly spinning itself
down the toilet.

So I’ll get home in three hours to a
message flashing on the machine. It will
be Mum and she’ll be saying something about
surgery which I won’t quite catch because
I’ll be wondering how my strong, lovely,
world-wise grandma failed the most important
exam of her life.



- Heather Kloosterman
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[stunned]Holly20:18:07 12/23/01 Sun

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