2025 exam season reflection

Hurrah! Exams are done, and summer has begun. The last month will most likely feel like a Red Bull-fuelled blur, but alas, we are here to snap you out of your amnesia and interrogate the period. Let’s reflect on yet another Bristol summer exam period, explore how we coped and dare suggest that Bristol University should have more than one library seat for every 10 students.

The battle of finding a seat in the library

When we applied to Bristol, I doubt we realised we were, in fact, applying to a version of The Hunger Games; forget District 12, we were fighting for our lives at 8:30 am in the ASS. If you were not in the library by 8:50, you had lost an entire day of revision; consider yourself defeated. A recent National Tab article revealed that there are 9.7 Bristol students for every one seat in the library. No wonder we reached 10,000 steps before 10 am on the well-known route that is ASS – Senate – Beacon and then back up to engineering. Worse than the libraries being packed with our peers was the seats being occupied by a mere hoodie and zero sign of life. We know some of you were depositing your belongings overnight to secure your seats. The verdict is out on whether you deserve to be rebuked or applauded for your cheating of the system.

I sincerely hope that for those of you who arrived at the library at 9:01, your results do not reflect the fact that there was nowhere to study besides your mouldy houses.

Library solidarity

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For those of you who passed the first test and sat smugly in the library, eyeing the dawdlers who were on their fourth lap of campus, I am sure you forged meaningful relationships with your peers in the library. A distinct camaraderie was fostered as we trawled through academic literature and tried not to crash out over the nonsensical questions in our Timed Assessments. A silver lining of exam season is the friends we made in silence; friendships characterised by nods of recognition at the same people you had seen every day for the previous three weeks. We spent more time with those strangers than we did with our housemates, albeit in silence, but it was the comfort of seeing the same crew that got us through.

Bad timing, Bristol, Bad timing

As well as providing no library seats, I also thank the university for their excellent timing of our exams. Of course, it was an absolute breeze having two timed assessments, one in-person exam and a dissertation to finish in the same week. There is nothing we love more than 13-hour library days. However, one would think that such could be avoided, considering the exam period was three weeks. We owe it to Bristol, though, for consistently ensuring our academic weaponry didn’t falter. Kingsdown Co-op also reaped such rewards as they made record-level profits on energy drinks, meal deals and snuss, all of which were consumed on the all-too-familiar steps that led into the 1960s brutalist building we called home.

How some of us coped, or how we didn’t cope

I am honoured to have borne witness to some of your coping mechanisms, of course, consistently comparing them to my own to work out who exam season had humbled the most. It was a pleasure to be seated next to one student whose desk was littered with three coffees and two Red Bulls. Another peer brought their pillow from home as if to set up camp for the next four days, let alone 9 hours. And I, of course, couldn’t write this without mentioning the computer science student who was periodically taking sips from a 7% IPA whilst coding. Kudos to you all; I really hope your results are reflective of how much work you put in, both to your studies and to the process of determining which beverages would best support you.

The absence of the university

What topped the whole season off was the complete absence of the university and our tutors. They all clocked off for the year ever so conveniently on the Friday before easter. Personal tutors: who are they? Seminar leaders? Don’t be silly, they don’t exist when they are not explaining some aspect of medieval antiquity in front of you. We suffered alone, the only thing keeping us going was each other, the friends whose names we do not know but spent the whole period sat breathing the same air in the ASS.

Channings as the host of our post-match analyses

In a similar fashion to birds migrating in response to changing seasons, it seems most of us were programmed to automatically head to Channings upon leaving the exam hall. Come rain or shine, blessed or cursed questions; apparently, there was nothing we needed more than to stand in a 30-minute queue to secure an overpriced Aperol. Channings bore witness to our post-exam tears, and intense relief that the ASS was no more. Of course, everyone we have ever known had the same idea. Your newfound library best mate now sat on the picnic bench opposite; your eyes, of course, had to adjust to seeing them with a pint instead of a pen in hand. There really was no better place to begin our post-exam lives than Bristol’s most loved beer garden.

At least we aren’t medics.

Perhaps I am too cynical, overly pessimistic. Of course, we have finished – what a triumph. We now have a long summer of finding ourselves abroad ahead of us. That is, of course, if you do not study medicine. Whilst we are dancing at Love Saves, returning to home-cooked meals and travelling Southeast Asia, lets spare a thought for Bristol medics to whom the ASS is certainly not a distant memory but a very present reality.

Best of luck for your results and congratulations for surviving the trenches once again!