Last week I had my first exam in this semester. It was the module I hated the most, it was so complicated, a random mix of numbers, theories and empirical evidence. I like the teacher, he did his best to make me understand. I putted in the work, but I was still struggling. A month ago, I returned to working full time, therefore my revision was late night/early morning reading. I was tired but I was focused, I was determined. I stayed up late into the night, jumped out of bed early in the mornings, sometimes as early as 3.05am. The motivation was to “pass- with flying colours” I mean, how could I not pass? I had all the information, what can possibly go wrong?
On the day of my exam I felt nervous, I was a mess, anxiety, tiredness and worry. The exam was at 6.00pm! At 5.30pm, I told my non-Muslim study buddy I was going to pray Asr quickly. I hurried away to the prayer room. I started my prayer in a hurry, for the first raka, I picked one of the shortest surah’s. When I got to the sajadah, I was suddenly overcome with guilt. I could not believe I was rushing my prayers for an exam. A bloody useless exam in this dunya was interfering with my prayer, my investment for the future , my worship, my link with Allah. In the four days leading up to the exam, I had swapped my after fajar Islamic reading in preparation for this exam, my thoughts had constantly been on passing this exam that I forgot the biggest one of all. How sad, how shameful! I contemplated not even attending the damn exam. I made a promise, never AGAIN. From that moment on I was clam, in fact I did not even care anymore, its importance started to fade. I even got to exam hall late. I did my best, then walked out and did no give it a second thought. Since then I’ve had three others…
