Exam blues ... well purple

There is a saying around Wits that if you haven't started studying for exams by the time the Jacaranda's bloom then there is a good chance you may not pass the exams. Given the tendency to weight exams heavily in the overall mark, this concerns most students.



The Jacarandas on campus are old and huge and beautiful. Their purple flowers are like the shedding of a drab winter coat, coming into flower around mid-October. When exams start in the second week of November (on the normal time-table) then the warning in the myth above is enough to spur-on even some of the most recalcitrant students. However, this saying has never been more true than this year.

Exams started nearly a month early this year, making space in the timetable for the 2010 enforced shut-down in the middle of the year. So this year the start of exams coincided with the start of the purple flush. If you hadn't made an effort to study, well, uhmn, then maybe there was no hope. Exams ending, in the first week of November, will probably the coincide with the falling of the purple blooms. And then if definitely would have been too late.