It is spring and persimmon is in season. This is a false statement, but stated to make a point. The point: October is National Exam Anxiety Month and none of its participants can be expected to remember anything about persimmons, which belong to February.
October? The instant noodle may as well be our official fruit this month. So, toast the luck of the HSC student with your ramen cup. Toast the student of the VCE, the QCE and the entire Year 12 alphabet. Toast 200,000 high school students and close to a million undergrads studying for exams and eating rather oddly in Australia this month. Toast Ayesha from across the road.
Ayesha is about to face her third year of biotech exams. She is ordinarily an ardent cook, of the type to know both kinds of persimmon and all kinds of persimmon facts. This month, she won’t remember one. She will make the effort to remember as little as she can of everything. Everything but biotech.
Exams demand a peculiar feat of human memory: fill it with single-use facts. There’s no place to store every fact of everyday life.
The student memory might not mean to dump a fact like “trousers are generally required by others” or “food is required for life”. Still, the pleasure, the season and even the function of food can be forgotten by any person urged to remember other things. Students are told with such great force that there is nothing more important than exams, and we mustn’t be surprised when they believe it.
The pleasure, the season and even the function of food can be forgotten by any person urged to remember other things.
We mustn’t be surprised if they find food an effort. Even for Ayesha, whose most typical use of non-biotech time is culinary. If she’s not advancing knife skills, she’s foraging for fungus or waging choux war on herself. In August, she broke her altitude record for croquembouche. She had one or two pieces then sent the rest to grateful neighbours. Last Wednesday, one such neighbour said, “I’ve just seen Ayesha – leaving the IGA with six packets of Allen’s Killer Pythons.”
I look forward to December, the month I will Photoshop Ayesha’s head onto a jelly snake body and tag it on Facebook. It would not be safe to do so now. If the mouth from which I first heard the word “teff” is filled this month with sugar, it might scowl at me. National Exam Anxiety Month is a very good month not to question a participant’s diet. It’s a month to be glad when anyone eats any food-type thing at all.
The sweet stuff will provide sustenance when kids' brains are too busy worrying about things more important than dinner. Source: Allen's
Even a good Year 12 kid can go bad at dinner. Maybe a vegetarian kid normally fond of artichoke will glare with hot aggression at the artichoke you made. Soon, the artichoke is cold. You ask the kid, “What in the name of uneaten artichoke?”. They are silent.
This month, one student will forget to chew. Another will not forget to chew but remember that congee, baby food and smoothies can save valuable seconds of chewing.
Next morning, the fridge is down a litre of milk and one pot of double cream. The freezer has been stripped of its ice-cream and all homemade frozen custard. You can’t be certain the near-full bottle of Cottee’s Ice Magic no-one ever wanted was expired. You can be certain its contents are inside a teenage disposal device.
Next month, artichokes will be gone, but your kid will again enjoy them. Next month, Ayesha will eat like an Instagram wellness hashtag.
But this month, one student will forget to chew. Another will not forget to chew but remember that congee, baby food and smoothies can save valuable seconds of chewing.
This month, partners and parents and pals of National Exam Anxiety Month will try to feed a memory. This will bring anxious meals and moments to you all. When it does, please don’t think you’ve been defeated. Just think about defeating a croquembouche instead.
Helen Razer is your frugal food enthusiast, guiding you to the good eats, minus the pretension and price tag in her weekly Friday column, Cheap Tart. Don't miss her next instalment, follow her on Twitter @HelenRazer.
