Hey, do you guys remember the old days of exams? I’m talking about the real exams, the ones where the stakes were about as high as your standard lunch box. You know, the ones where the only thing you had to worry about was whether your pen would run out of ink halfway through the paper. Nowadays, exams might give you a heart attack or two, but back in those days, it wasn’t like that. At least, not for me.

  The exam season back then was an absolute treat. Five days, five exams. Simple, right? You had your Mother Language, English, Science, Math, and drawing. Yeah, that was pretty much it. No surprise pop quizzes, no surprise essays on topics you’d never even heard of before. Just these five trusty subjects, lined up like soldiers ready for battle.

  Now, let me tell you something about our school’s unspoken rule. It wasn’t written down anywhere, and there were no official announcements, but it was a tradition passed down from generation to generation. We didn’t take our regular school bags for exams. Oh no, that would be too normal. Instead, we each took a carry bag. Yeah, a plain, humble carry bag. You know, the ones that your mom used to get at the local store to carry home your vegetables? Those. The “exam carry bags” were a special breed. They contained everything you needed: an exam board, a geometry box, and three to four pens—just in case one or two decided to suddenly fail on you in the middle of a math crisis. And because you never knew which pen would last the longest, it was always better to be overprepared.

  But the true gem of my exam carry bag was the relic I always made sure to pack, my clean white carry bag. It wasn’t just any bag. It was a treasure, a memento from my birthday dress shopping trip with my dad. It was pristine, untouched, and somehow made me feel like I was carrying around a slice of my childhood every time I saw it. That bag still sits in my closet to this day, and every now and then I’ll pull it out and remember the good old days, wondering if it’s still capable of holding all my adult responsibilities. Probably not.

  So, now that we had our bags packed, it was time for the exam. And let me tell you, math exams were a whole different beast. I remember preparing for Mother Language at home because, well, it was first on the schedule. It’s amazing how that works, right? Something about the order of subjects sticks with you in a way that defies all logic. Since Mother Language was always first, I somehow convinced my brain that it was the most important one. Subconsciously, I started treating it like it was the gatekeeper to the rest of my exam world. It was a battle I had to win before the math beast came charging at me.

  And then, of course, came the math exam. This was the big one. The one that separated the wheat from the chaff, the real intellectual heavyweights from the mere mortals. But did I study for it like I should’ve? Of course not. Why? Because that’s how we rolled back then. Why study math when you’ve just conquered Mother Language, right? I had a feeling my subconscious had decided that math would just work itself out. After all, I had survived three years of math exams without breaking a sweat, so why bother actually studying?

  Fast forward to the exam, and I’m sitting there with my pens at the ready, my geometry box glaring at me with its silent judgment. I look around, see the other kids frantically scribbling away, and think, “Yeah, I’m doing alright. I got this.”

  The teacher was moving down the rows, handing out question papers like she was distributing bad news. When mine landed on my desk, I didn’t even blink—I flipped straight to the second-last page like a man on a mission.

  There it was: Question no 3(a). It looked like Elon Musk personally designed it as the entrance test for SpaceX—though, to be fair, it was probably easy for someone who hadn’t spent math class drawing swords with their compass.

  I cracked my knuckles, clicked my pen like a mathematician about to change the world, and dove in.

  I simplified. I factored. I derived. I even squinted at it like it might reveal its secrets telepathically.

  But it didn’t.

  So, I did what any determined student raised on motivational posters and guilt trips would do — I kept going.

  I heard my math teacher’s voice echoing in my head like some Jedi ghost:

  "Never give up. Maths is a war. Be the last one standing."

  And by God, I stood. I fought that equation like a gladiator in a calculator-free Colosseum.

  Page after page, derivation after derivation. My hand started cramping. My eraser died a hero. Even my pen started squeaking like it was begging for mercy. I began inventing steps that didn’t even exist in the curriculum. At one point, I think I created a new branch of math.

  And then — after all the mental gymnastics, all the algebraic acrobatics — I stopped. Looked at what I’d done.

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  And realized I had somehow… magically… landed right back where I started.

  I had achieved equational enlightenment.

  I sat there in silent defeat. The question hadn’t changed. I hadn’t changed. Only the number of pages sacrificed in the process.

  And then, there it was—Question no 3(b). A neat little six-marker that should’ve been a gift from the exam gods:

  “If sin?θ = 1/2 and θ is an acute angle, find the value of cos?θ.”

  Simple, right?

  Wrong.

  Because the moment I saw it, my brain hit the panic button like it had just been told the Earth was flat and spinning backwards. Sin?θ equals 1/2? That felt… too easy. Suspiciously easy. Like the kind of question that pretends to be your friend and then stabs you in the back with a minus sign.

  So what did I do? I overthought it. Aggressively.

  I started by drawing a triangle. Then another one, just to double-check. Then I redrew it, this time labeling the hypotenuse as “Hope” and the opposite side as “Despair.” I even brought in sin2θ + cos2θ = 1 because somewhere deep inside, my brain decided that the only way out was through the Pythagorean gates of trigonometric hell.

  I wrote:

  sin2θ + cos2θ = 1

  (1/2)2 + cos2θ = 1

  1/4 + cos2θ = 1

  cos2θ = 3/4

  cos?θ = √3/2

  And then paused.

  It felt right.

  Which meant it must be wrong.

  I didn’t trust it. I’ve trusted answers before. I’ve been betrayed before.

  So I spiraled. I brought out inverse sine, radians, the unit circle, and even considered whether this was some secret question from the complex numbers chapter wearing a disguise.

  Meanwhile, the guy sitting next to me, who once used a protractor as a sandwich holder, had calmly written “cos?θ = √3/2” and was now resting with his hands behind his head like he was on a beach in Puerto Rico.

  When I realized, my answer had four diagrams, two mini-paragraphs, and one Einstein-level derivation. I paused — not out of doubt, but because I wasn’t solving the question anymore; I was auditioning for a TED Talk. The margins looked like a Da Vinci sketchbook. I had used so many arrows and dotted lines that even a GPS would’ve gotten confused.

  And the kicker? The question just said: “Find cos(30°).”

  That's it.

  Just that.

  Like this, I solved all the other subjective questions one by one — each answer more unnecessarily elaborate than the last. I was on a roll. My confidence levels? Sky high. My handwriting? Slowly evolving into cursive Sanskrit. But hey, I was in the zone.

  Then came the objective section. The multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, one-word-answer part that most people breezed through in under five minutes.

  Not me.

  I approached each objective like it was a riddle left behind by an ancient civilization. First question? Solved. Second? Crushed it. Third? I paused for dramatic effect — then annihilated it with an unnecessarily detailed side note. I was mid-way through the list when I looked at my paper, grinned, and thought, “If Sir Isaac Newton rose from the grave right now, I’d beat him in a derivation duel. One-on-one. No calculator. Just vibes.”

  But then... disaster struck.

  I get to question 48, and I realize… wait a minute. This doesn’t look like anything I studied. I mean, it doesn’t even resemble a math problem. It’s like the question was written in another language. My mind starts to go into full-blown panic mode. I glance around the room like a detective looking for clues. But then, out of nowhere, Omar leans over and whispers, “The answer is 25.”

  Now, I had no idea what he was talking about. I mean, what was 25? But hey, he seemed confident, and I could use some of that confidence right about now. So I wrote it down, even though it didn’t feel right. But hey, at least it was better than writing down nothing, right?

  Fast forward to the end of the exam. I hand in my paper, feeling kind of good about it, even though deep down I know I might have just written down random numbers on half the questions. The teacher begins collecting the papers, and I can hear the rustling of papers as she stacks them on her desk. It’s like the whole room is holding its breath in anticipation. Then, out of nowhere, Spencer—the class topper—walks up to me and casually drops a bombshell: “The answer to question 48, you wrote 108, right?”

  I freeze.

  Wait a minute. 108?

  No. I wrote 25. I definitely wrote 25 because Omar told me to. And sure, Omar wasn’t exactly a mathematical genius, but he had that kind of “trust me, bro” confidence that made you believe him. But now Spencer was saying 108? Spencer! The guy who lived and breathed correct answers? If Spencer said the answer was 108, then 108 it was.

  Panic hit me like a freight train. What if Omar had just pulled that number out of thin air? What if 25 was completely wrong? What if, right now, my math score was hanging by a thread?

  Before I knew it, my body had decided for me. I moved like a caffeinated ninja. Mission: Replace Answer 25. Objective: Don’t get caught. Backup plan? Cry.

  The teacher was still busy collecting papers, her back turned to me. I moved fast—scanning the desk, spotting my answer sheet like a trained professional, and with the grace of a seasoned forger, I scribbled out the answer I originally wrote and replaced it with 108.

  Why did I do this? I still don’t know. Maybe I was too caught up in the panic of the moment. Maybe it was my subconscious telling me that Spencer was right. But one thing I do know: I had guts. I had guts that day.

  The teacher didn’t notice anything. She kept on collecting papers like nothing had happened — like she wasn’t just three seconds away from catching a full-blown academic heist in progress. I walked out cool as ever, like I had just pulled off the most audacious move in the history of exam-taking. James Bond? Please. I was James Board — armed with an exam pad, shaky handwriting, and the stealth of a panicked squirrel.

  And the result?

  86.

  Yeah, not even kidding.

  49 in objective. 37 in subjective.

  And here’s the twist: all the objectives were right… except for that one tiny masterpiece I changed — all thanks to Spencer’s “trust me, I’m a genius” voice whispering in my brain. The answer I had originally written? It was right. The one I swapped it for?

  Wrong.

  So technically, I didn’t just get it wrong. I personally escorted the right answer out of the building and invited the wrong one in for snacks. Classic me, right?

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