Picture the scene. I was in year 11 doing the most important exams of my life thus far. My absolute worst subject was chemistry, I was horrific at it. I’d messed up so many practicals that I now had to sit out whilst the rest of the class did them, I was a danger to myself and everyone around me in the chemistry lab. It was exam season and my exam was coming up. I was terrified, no amount of revision seemed to be able to prepare me for the horror of this chemistry exam.

The morning of the exam my mum was at work, she is usually a stay-at-home mum but she was helping out at my dad’s work that day. Bear this in mind. I spent the whole morning revising hard, trying to cram the last smidges of knowledge into my mind. The exam was at 1:30. As we live in the middle of nowhere and there’s not a bus route within walking distance, my mum was due to leave work at 12 to come and get me to take me for my exam. It was a foolproof plan, she had plenty of time to get home, pick me up, and drop me in school so I’d be early for my exam and could get some last minute advice from the teacher. What could go wrong?

I took a break at around 12 to make myself some lunch and relax a bit before my exam, I’d been stressing all morning so I put on an episode of catfish and relaxed whilst I ate. I kept glancing at the clock, it got to half 12 and I was confused, mum should have been home by now if she’d left at 12. I didn’t worry too much though, maybe she was just finishing something off. I waited another half an hour, I didn’t want to call her and stress her unnecessarily if she was on her way so I waited until the time we would have to leave in order to get me to school on time. 1:00. I had half an hour before the most stressful exam of my life would start. The clock was ticking.

“Hi Mum, you nearly here? I’m gunna be late.”

“What?” There was a very long pause.

Then we started to panic.

Mum had finally looked at the clock on her desk, yup, you guessed it, she was still at her desk. She’d completely lost track of time. There was no way on earth she was going to make it to me and get me to school in the now 25 minutes we had. It wasn’t going to happen and I was going to miss the exam. I was going to get a zero on it and fail the subject that I had slaved over all year. Understandably, I think, I started to ugly cry. My mum also started to ugly cry. Then she told me to hold the line and hung up. This was the breaking point for me, I was pacing up and down my living room ugly crying and trying not to hyperventilate, what the hell was I going to do? I was completely stranded.

Then the phone rang back, I started shouting at her, blaming her (sorry ma). But it wasn’t ma on the phone. It was one of her colleagues. She told me to shut up and listen. She was calling me a taxi and I was going to be in it in five minutes, I’d only be fifteen minutes late for the exam and they were going to notify my school. I’d be met out of the taxi by an invigilator who’d take my phone and take me into the full exam hall of students who would already have started their exam. It really was the stuff of nightmares, the thought of walking into that exam and all 100 students looking up from their papers as I walked in sobbing was enough to send me over the edge again.

The colleague hung up the phone and it was all stations go. I grabbed my bag, my notes and my pencil case and bolted out the house. I was going to wait for the taxi at the end of the road, anything to speed it all up, the earlier I got there the better. I stood pacing at the bottom of my road, desperately waiting for this taxi to show up. And he did, a massive cab big enough for 8 people slammed on the breaks and yelled at me to jump in. On that day, that taxi driver became my hero. He’d clearly been made aware of the situation at hand. I can honestly say that I have never been in a car that went as quick as his car, it was like a bloody F1 race. He broke every rule of the road and probably got at least three tickets. This man was determined that he was going to make the 40 minute drive in the 10 minutes I now had before my exam started.

We pulled up to school at 1:35. 5 minutes after my exam had started. He’d made the 40 minute drive in about 20 minutes. My mum was there to meet me, in floods of tears as she paid the taxi driver and I gave her a quick hug before the invigilator started running with me towards the exam hall, telling me exactly what was going to happen as she did. I would be sat at the very back (great, so I’d have to walk past everyone), the invigilators inside would know and I’d be given the extra time I’d missed at the end of the exam. That’s exactly what happened. I went in, I did the exam (although I barely remember doing it, I was on autopilot at this stage). When I came out my teacher and all my friends were waiting for me and we all just started laughing. After the disastrous year of chemistry I’d had, it was almost fitting that it would end like this.

But you know what? On results day I opened the envelope with my results… I had not dropped a single mark on that paper. I got 100%, the most I had ever gotten on a chemistry paper.

Thanks for reading, what’s your worst exam experience? Let me know in the comments below!

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