Friday, December 5, 2008

Multi-choice = multi-indecision

I find decision-making difficult at the best of times.
I have just staggered from a multi-choice exam in philosophy and ethics...in Norwegian: in short a case of compulsory, timed, decision-making at the worst of times.
One would think these things (multi-choice) are easy but no... I can overcomplicate the most simple of matters and have a tendency to do so. If I am given a choice of A to C, I convince myself that A is correct, but only to an extent, and the answer is indeed a synthesis of B and C.
This is how my exam time was spent:
1. Scribble my name
2. Write my name again, legibly this time
3. Take a deep breath in, scan questions and begin berating myself for my indecision, watch my hand making promises my head won't commit to. A kind of strange out of body experience.
4. Convince myself that blue pen is inadmissable and start to fret about what to do to remedy the situation.
5. Hand in exam paper
6. Realise have not yet exhaled, promptly do so.

Passed the tricky thing but am still feeling as if each tiny decision has enormous consequences. Thus, choosing what to have for dinner suddenly became a tightrope walk between neurotic over-analysis of kitchen cupboards and appetite and a compensatory complete capitulation of any decision.

Said exam had a fearsome four-hour resit in January for the hapless individuals who didn't make it through, meaning yet more revision and all through the hols: the festive season suddenly acquires the prefix "un". Any contemplation of which brought back my realisation as a very small child that we had no discernable chimney, swiftly followed by a graphological analysis of Santa's handwriting revealed he wrote just like my mum: someone cancelled Christmas. Anyhow, exam is over, passed, in the past. Christmas is back on the metaphorical (not to mention overpriced consumerist) cards, all I have to do now is to decide what to do with myself.