Post-Exam Re-Entering of a Body

I am back on a train - curled up in my usual foetal position, laptop balanced on my knees. It seems like a very long time since I was in contact with anyone. Since I was in contact with myself. Since I remembered that my body was more than just a machine for typing or moving ones head from the library to home and back again. In the last month a dissertation has been slowly, escrutiatingly painfully eeked out of my body, an exam of unimagineable failure has also been produced on the back of a burnout of caffeine, emotionally charged highs and lows and sleepless nights.

Submerged in my train carriage there is the usual exhiliration of movement and travel. And the trick of re-entering my body has been accompanied by a week of utter beauty, creativity, red wine and good people. The Highlands has the utter drama and tragedy of poetry - and a few days hibernated in a log cabin with a set of delightful, entertaining friends left my soul subsumed in the joy of connection. The sharp oranges, misty lochs and straggling pathways pushed my body into itself with a solid, satisfying bump.

Not satisfied with just my body back a theatre trip to Germany reclaimed some of my mind - the part that had had the innovation and orginality knocked out of it by the dry academia of essay writing. Our dear “Tempest’ cast stretched, laughed and ate our way back to sanity. Saunas and waist deep snow dives under the stars accompanied with a Bavarian gingerbread cottage of a home, stuffed full of theatrical antics reminded me of the joy of silliness and creation.

Swept up in the finale of my journey of reclaimation of soul and body from the dragons of exams, deadlines and dissapointment I have ended with the solitary goodness of contact with someone you love, if only for a few all too brief hours, an interlude with close friends and an adopted family before she leaves for Rwanda, a smoky, sweet night with a school friend in Cardiff and finally a short sharp trip to Derby for more red wine and soul revitalisation.

I have journeyed far from the stagnation of a week ago.

And the madness and thunder of those exam weeks seems like a different life. It all links to the joy of being once more on the move, once more free to travel where I will, once again being on a train about to start another adventure. And for a billionth time I wonder why we must quantify and measure ourselves through this strange process of education. My two months of blog entries from Georgia remind me more viciously and strikingly of what I learnt from the women of the Caucasus then the 12,000 words of a heavily clipped, academic dissertation written in the early hours of Scottish mornings. The late night discussions and spitting disagreement on language and its influence on our thoughts and our politics with my room mate solidified my ideas more than that three hour exam will ever glimpse.

I am identitfied, summed up, even valued by factors that seem so far from the essence of who I am. The grade that sits beside my transcript and declares to the world who I can expect to be and what I am justified in dreaming say nothing of the image of a supra (dinner) in Tbilisi accompanied with vodka, home made wine and a host father’s speech on the greatness of Stalin, they don’t mention the bruises my arms and legs carry from fliniging myself around a German school in a performance last week of Shakespeare, they don’t explain the dilemmas of decisions as to whether Buddhism makes sense or how amazing it is to learn to love and be loved in return. Those exams, that pull you out of yourself and make you lose sight of what is important rest on comparison and individualism, not on a sense of community or connection. And at the end of the day, what do they test - accept how best to box and categorise and constrain your aspirations, your desires and your future?