That’s What Your Mum Said

I am turning 27 this year. Although I completed an undergraduate degree immediately after school, it did not involve any exams – all of my assessments were essay, website (clearly I didn’t learn a great deal) or feature writing based.

What I am getting at here is that I haven’t done an exam since my final year of high school.

I was 17 turning 18.

That was 9 years ago.

There are a few words running through my discombobulated brain – they would all potentially have me arrested for offensive conduct if an officer of the law (or a conscientious member of the public undertaking a citizens arrest) heard me mutter them.

Hey, I have soaked in and understood some information! Here’s hoping the Criminal law exam asks about offensive conduct, and only about offensive conduct…I am not sure I can remember anything else!

Any ideas for making this less than razor-sharp painful? I certainly plan on eating well and giving the noggin’ something decent to work with nutrient wise. However stress busters are a requirement…and I am not so good at the stress busters. HELP!

Living in a social world as most of us do presents some interesting situations that necessitate a lot of thought and some quick-thinking. Most of the time, if you do manage to move the old cogs things will work in your favour. Weird and awkward situations arise when people just go in willy-nilly and ignore the requirement for some rational deliberation.

There are two blogs I have read recently that touch on this issue. Lilu at Livit Luvit talks about people being idiots and not walking on the right hand side of the path. She is in the Northern hemisphere so I will forgive her; I also totally understand her frustration as I experience it often here when people don’t walk on the left hand side. Over at xkcd they write about urinal protocol and the importance of calculating your position. Obviously as a lady I don’t have this issue however it is something that has always fascinated me and I have queried the partner about at length. What do you do if someone stands next to you when they have other places to go? Would you ever tell them they aren’t being thoughtful if they did? Have you ever accidentally peed on someones shoes?

Two social things that shit me are when I am in a toilet stall in a row of empty toilet stalls and someone goes into the one next to me. Dude, I am trying to poo in peace! The other is when someone places themselves in the seat next to me when I am practically alone in a cinema. I experienced this a few years ago when I was the ONLY person in the theatre waiting to see ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’ (I understood why after I watched it) and an older couple sat directly next to me. Maybe they felt sorry for me, but I was fucking pleased to be there alone – I did not require company. To top it off, the man had a voice synthesizer which was pretty awesome but very distracting. Every time he laughed I had to struggle not to laugh. Awkward.

I try reaaaaaly hard to think about other people in these circumstances and how I would want the situation to play out. If only everyone was as awesome as me.

Which awkward social moments do you believe require more brain power than most people utilise?