Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…..

….once upon a time in a faraway land there lived a beautiful young princess (humour me here) who decided to sit a Financial Decision Making 24 hour assessment. Maths not being her strongest point, (let’s just say her Maths ability or lack thereof contributed at least in part to the 3 little princes and princesses running around the castle) she studied her royal butt off for several months and was feeling pretty confident as the Big Day approached that she would be able to meet the challenge.

Two days before the assessment was due to be released, she visited the beautiful Princess Catherine (you’re welcome Cat!) in her neighbouring castle-with-a-view, because fair princess Catherine was known throughout the kingdom as a) the maker of the best home-made pizza in the land and b) married to Sir Kelly of Denmark, not unlike a certain other famous figure in history for his uncanny ability to miraculously turn water into wine.

That night the princess wandered home through the enchanted forest of Friday-night Tokyo city revellers, warm and a little fuzzy. Particularly fuzzy if truth be told. In fact, as fuzzy goes, she was fuzzier than a fuzzy thing when it’s really fuzzy. But, safe in the knowledge that by 8pm the following evening, (12pm in the UK) she would be recovered and fully fit to sit her paper. Overnight, the 5 month old Never-Sleeping-Beauty pulled another classic, and so by 7am (6am?!) Saturday morning the princess was feeling a little…well….like she’d been hit by a steamroller to say the least. But no matter! Still over 12 hours to recover.

She sat at the royal banquet table with some peanut butter toast and PG Tea to check her university website for any last minute messages….but….what was this? “Assessment Question”? Surely they mean mock paper, no? No? Just a minute….Saturday 24th April 12pm ISN’T the time the paper is due to be released – it’s the DEADLINE!!!

“#$%&$!” said the princess in a most un-princess-like way. “#$%&$!” repeated all the little princes and princesses joyfully as they ran around the castle room. The wicked witch (mother in law) glared balefully at the princess. You just made them all say “#$%&$” she scowled, breathing fire.

A quick mathematical calculation of the kind not included in the mock paper told the princess she was already 14 hours down with only 8 to go till deadline. “#$%&$!” she said again and turned to address the Evil Dictator King (and Great With-holder of ye credit cards) “Go and see if I can use ye olde PC down in the computer room on the second floor”.

You see, to make things even more confusing, the princess and Evil Dictator King were planning on selling the castle rooms and had arranged an open room for THAT afternoon, thinking the exam was the following day. Therefore, not only could the princess not complete the exam in the castle, but she also had to clean the castle for the arrival of ye olde potential buyers. As if all this wasn’t confusing enough, E.D.King had also signed up for a Strategy course starting that afternoon. Let’s just cut to the chase and say that, in short, it was a “perfect storm” of a situation!

OK – don’t panic! My golden chalice is still half full. I still have 8 hours to go. In the absence of any frogs I could potentially kiss and turn into financial whizzes (preferably hot financial whizzes but I suppose beggars can’t be choosers) all I need is a LAN cable that works, and to print the exam paper off and take it with me to the computer room. Actually that’s not strictly all I need. Two first class tickets to Mauritius might also be nice but…focus, princess, focus! The wicked witch (who by this point was pacing the castle floor shaking her head and muttering to herself “I can’t believe she said ‘#$%&$’”) was assigned cleaning duty and all our brave princess needed to do was take all her royal crap downstairs and get on with it. Except……the printer wasn’t working. “#$%&$!” yelled the princess again as she searched the castle for a baseball bat to take to the printer. Followed by her own head. The wicked witch barely flinched at this point.

Suddenly, the not-so-evil-dictator-turned-suddenly-handsome-prince-slash-hero of-the-story burst through the door waving a shining silver LAN cable in one hand. The princess rushed down to the computer room (slash-sauna as some bratty princes from another kingdom had seen fit to crank up the aircon to 30 degrees) trailing cables, paper, revision notes and textbooks in her wake. Suddenly the extra 100 quid a month the princess and super-handsome-hero-prince had been paying for the building services they never use was absolutely worth it.

A mere 6 hours later, the paper was written, the spreadsheets were embedded correctly (she hopes) turnitin had appeared to receive the uploaded document, and despite burning a hole in her stomach lining roughly the size and shape of Texas, the princess lived happily ever after.

The moral of the story: it doesn’t matter how much study you do, or how much revision, CHECK THE RELEASE TIME OF THE #$%&$ ASSESSMENT!!!

(A second useful lesson to be learned is that a sudden shock, intense stress and panic clears your head far more effectively than tomato juice, worcester sauce and a raw egg ever could!)

A valuable/stressful lesson

You know, I would love to tell you the above was a fairy story, but it was all true! I am stunned by my stupidity – I produced fabulous, complicated, pretty spreadsheets in the course of my revision. My calculations were spot-on, my balance sheet balanced, my cash flow flowed (why does that never happen in real life??)….the one thing I never did was check the time of the assessment! I just assumed that “Saturday 24th April 12pm BST” was the release time, not the deadline! Thank God I checked my mail that morning, otherwise I would have settled down happily on Saturday evening and found I had all of two minutes to complete the assessment!

No matter – despite the drama the paper is written and in, and I am now forever grateful that I did the mock paper as part of my revision – actually sitting and practicing doing the calculations made it MUCH easier in the real thing, and I was able to make up spreadsheets much more easily under timed conditions having already made so many in the preceding weeks.

Wooooooo! It’s over! One of my biggest concerns was how I was going to be able to go 24 hours without a glass of wine – as it turned out that kind of became a non-issue! The results probably won’t come out much before July but you know, forget them - right now I am just glad I am still breathing!

So – here we are at the end of April. The Marketing assessment paper has been written and will be tidied up over the next few days, ready to be sent before the deadline of April 29th (which I have checked and re-checked about 15 times in the last 24 hours!). As I mentioned last month, Golden Week is now approaching here in Japan and I intend to have even better a time than I originally planned before all this drama unfolded!

One more paper to go – Project Management - in July. I also need to tidy up and complete my Learning Diary (module 1) which I hope to send off at the same time. I sincerely hope the Module 1 tutor is not reading this, else she will know that all my carefully planned and executed “Anxiety Management” and “Relaxation Techniques” I have been faithfully recording and practicing through my Module 1 self-development plan went completely out the window yesterday and I was borderline hysterical! Oh well, maybe she will let me claw back some marks for being able to laugh about it – now!

See you all next month!

 

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