Text 1: Exam season, week three, by Zara Oddie

An original contemporary blog.

I have now sat eleven GCSE papers and I have fourteen still to go. I know this because there is a chart on our fridge, and my mum crosses off each one in red pen with a ceremony that is slightly too enthusiastic.

The strange thing is that the exams themselves are not the worst part. Once I’m in the hall, with the clock ticking at the front and two hundred people breathing quietly around me, I actually feel calm. It’s the night before that gets me. I lie awake running through quotations and imagining questions I can’t answer.

Chemistry on Tuesday was a disaster. I opened the paper, read the first question and my mind went completely white. I sat there for what felt like an hour but was probably two minutes, then made myself move on. By the end I’d answered everything, though I’m not sure how well.

Afterwards everyone stood outside comparing answers, which is the worst habit in the world. My friend Ellie burst into tears because she’d got a different answer for question six. Then we went and ate chips on the wall by the car park, and somehow everything felt manageable again.

Four weeks to go. I am tired, I am sick of revision cards, and I am weirdly proud of myself.

Text 2: A diary of the examination week, by Edith Hambling

An original diary written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this diary, kept in 1872, a sixteen-year-old girl records sitting a public examination set by a university for school pupils.

Monday, 16 December. The examination began today in the Town Hall. There are thirty-one of us, nine of them girls, and we sit at little tables set far apart, with a gentleman from the University walking up and down between them. Papa drove me there and said nothing the whole way, which was worse than any advice.

The English paper was in the morning, and I was so frightened at first that my hand shook and I blotted the very first line. But the questions on grammar were ones Miss Nettleship had made us practise, and after a while I forgot to be afraid and wrote until the bell.

Tuesday, 17 December. Arithmetic, and I am sure I have done badly. There was a sum about the filling of a cistern by two pipes that I could make nothing of. I came home and cried, and Mamma said it would not matter in fifty years, which I did not find comforting.

Thursday, 19 December. French and History, both pleasant. One of the boys told me in the passage that girls had no business sitting at all, and I told him that I should be glad to compare our results in February. I think he was rather surprised.

It is all over. I am more tired than I have ever been, and very glad.

Using information from both texts, explain briefly how the students felt about their examinations.

You should make it clear which text you are referring to.