So, here's what the situation is with me. I got out of university with a very decent degree and spent the next two years totally unable to find permanent work, watching my self-confidence and marketability as a job candidate both gradually eroding down to zero. Eventually, desperate to do something to fill the widening maw of empty time on my CV - and I believe this is the first time I've mentioned this on E2 - I decided to take a Master's degree in Computer Science at Hull. If I can't work, I might at least bulk up my academic achievements, yes? I had to scrape together pretty much all the cash I'd saved up from temping to cover it, but I felt it was worth it... I mean, I don't have much else to do with it, since I have fairly limited ambitions as regards the spending of large amounts of money. Anyway, I have been working on this for most of the past year, and... well, let me narrate this for you.
The project work I did on pathfinding optimisation has left much to be desired, mainly due to me mucking about on the internet playing games with pathfinding routines coded into them instead of studying the routines themselves. I also performed fairly badly on the first two exams because they covered weird abstract low-layer stuff of which I had no intuitive grasp and which I'd completely failed to follow in lectures. All of this, however, I wrote off as justifiable sacrifice because it was the topics for the third exam which I knew I could really ace.
I was walking from the library to the exam hall, fifteen minutes before the start time of the third exam, when I ran into my good friends Dan, Jim and Andy, coming in the opposite direction.
"Dude, where were you?"
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I called my tutor.
He told me that they had sent somebody to look for me, and rung my room phone and knocked on my door. I told him in turn that they hadn't found me because I had got up early that day, and spent the entire morning at the library, studying for that very exam. They had also rung my mobile number, which, again, had failed, because it was turned off, because I was, again, at the library, studying.
He asked me if I had been feeling ill on the day. No, I admitted, I had not. I had never felt more healthy, more prepared, more utterly on perfect form for an examination. I had simply not been there.
"Was there any justifiable reason why you could have missed the exam?"
EVERY SINGLE OTHER EXAM STARTED AT ONE-THIRTY. THIS ONE STARTED AT TEN. I DIDN'T READ THE TIMETABLE CAREFULLY ENOUGH.
"...Then I can't think of anything I could do. ...I know you weren't happy about your project work, but how did you think you did in the first two papers?"
My response to this question was to burst into tears and crumple up against a wall.
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That was a few months ago. I have now, today, received the results of my final appeal. The answer is: no, my failure stands. I have now lost all my money and a year of my life and the gap in my CV is now three years wide. I have to start over from nothing, AGAIN.
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Heh. Gotcha.
Who hasn't had this nightmare?