Exams start tomorrow for

 the final year of secondary school in this state.The first one is a mathematics paper.  I don't envy these students.

The library has been very quiet recently. This is despite the fact it is filled with students. Heads are down. The mathematicians are scribbling arcane notes, frowning, sighing and nudging a neighbour who is working on the same thing.

If I need to go into the library I try to creep in very quietly. I look nervously around. Is there a student I know. Are they going to want to talk to me about a problem.

I cannot help with the maths. It is too long ago. I only did the old "Leaving" level maths. It was all I needed...and I loathed maths as a subject. It took all my skill to get through the compulsory statistics course at university...and I could not do that now. Things have changed. I can do the occasional statistical test - but only when I am questioning the validity of something. Anything more than that and I would need to go to an expert.

These students are using signs and symbols I am not familiar with at all. I leave them to that. 

But English or history, psychology, legal studies, their research project? I am fair game there...and so are the library staff and anyone else who happens to be around. Yes, we help if we can. We will do anything to try and reduce the stress.  

But really is it as bad now as it was for us? These exams represent just thirty percent of the available marks for the year. The rest is their course work. Our exams were one hundred percent on the day - pass or fail. Here there are students who already have enough marks. They know they have already passed the subject in question. 

"But Cat I need to do more because I want to get into...." The student saying this will name a tertiary course where the competition to enter is fierce. Well, it was fierce in our day too - just less obvious.

On Friday I prowled cautiously in to the library and passed over the remaining chocolate frogs from the night before. I had added another packet. I handed them over to one of the library staff and she went quietly around putting a frog next to each student. Another staff member and I watched as frowns turned to smiles. Chocolate frogs do help at exam time.