After an entire week of studying up to 8pm in the State Library (and up to 11.30 at home), there I was, in the Wentworth lawn, twenty minutes away from facing my Trade midterm. I've never studied so hard for anything in my life.

I knew it would be one of those tests that I could never really study enough for. So I kept pressing on. Re-solving every single problem I was given; re-reading all the slides and models until my A4 handouts were no longer the crisp and smooth sheets they had once been.

Mark and Alex handed out the papers to the class. I sat on the first row, away from the main door, as usual. I always sit in the front row whenever I take tests. We were given ten minutes to read through the two problems we had to solve in an hour. And it was the longest ten minutes of my life. My brain raced through the solutions I needed for the questions, whilst controlling my hand from writing everything I didn't want to forget.

"You may start," Mark tells the class.

I freeze. I stare at the first problem, and nothing. I struggle to write the words Australia, China and Thailand. How do I get the comparative advantage again? What does the price of machinery over the price of rice = 4/3 tell me? So I skipped the first question and moved to the next. How do I solve for output? X=Y. Yes. Price equals cost. Oh Lord. I'm in trouble now. I've never choked on a test this badly.

I crawled my way through #1, and found that I only had thirty minutes to answer the harder #2. I stare at the question again. Nothing. I play around with the equations I know. Nothing. I stare the ceiling and get distracted by Mark and Alex whispering to each other and giggling every few seconds. I try another equation. Nothing.

At ten minutes to the hour I get desperate. If I don't get this question, I'd be blowing half the test. I try another equation. I'm getting something. I keep at it and I end up with a whole number. I write faster and faster and before I know it, Mark says, "Okay that's it," as I hear sheets of paper ruffling through the air. Alex stares down at me with his Cyrano de Bergerac nose. Two seconds later he taps my table, as I struggle to write R-y-b-c-z-y-n-s-k-i on may paper. "FINISH! FINISH!" he pokes at my patience as he taps even faster on my table. I eased my paper forward without looking at him, stood up, walked towards Fisher and plopped onto one of the benches as I scrambled through my problem sets for the solution. I couldn't let it go. The temptation to agonise myself with my mistakes was too strong. I found the problem, but the solutions were different. I spied the guy who semi-helped me out in Alex's office hour, but he was talking to someone else, and was too far to chase down.

I retreated to Fisher, where I had originally planned to go to get some work done before heading to Chinatown for dinner. Then I saw him. The guy with the Schwarzenegger accent from the office hour. I dither around the fourier before deciding to go after him to ask him to put me out of my misery.

He was about to lay on the grass using his blue canvas bag as a pillow when I said, "Excuse me, you're in trade right?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, so what did you get for part two!? Do you remember the output?" I asked, as I ploped my bag, and myself on the grass, like tea cups in a Chinese restaurant. I was on a mission to sever the section of my brain that made me choke.
"Two and half and seven and a half?"

I clapped my hands in glee. It was an awkward clap. One and a half to be exact. I suppressed this expression of glee because I never clap when I'm happy. Let alone with a stereotypical German, with the particular shade of blonde hair and blue eyes that you only get from Germany, whom I just met. And yes, he did put me out of my misery - I didn't bomb the test. We ended up talking like we've known each other our whole lives for an hour and a half.