The Matrix

March, the month of reproduction. What I feared most was my IT friend – that would be pure cramming, no logic in an exam that should be logical. After those tests, we can focus on the real work, the paper and my short film.

On the train, I tried to calm my nerves by interpreting a poem by Lucebert over and over again. I tried to enjoy his words, get drunk and forget my fears, and it helped. An hour later, I was standing in front of the asbestos-covered building called school.

A dark, long corridor sucked me towards his office, and I thought of the new wardrobe door I had ruined that morning and the pen stained with blood, caused by frantically writing down some computer diagrams on my sheet of paper, charts that wouldn’t stick in my head, I kept forgetting one link or another, a link I refused to see.

Jesus, what a bloody awful course.

Before I knew it, I was sitting in the room with him, preparing my questions, along with a few other sweating bodies, while a victim was being tortured in front of him. We saw the poor creature descend into complete self-destruction. He knew the solution, but this man sitting in front of him spoke a different language, twisted his sentences, inserted new twists and finally gave you that fatal “you’re stupid” feeling.

Immersed in the atmosphere around me, I finally ventured a glance at the note with the two questions in front of me. The first was a computer diagram, ouch, the one I had tried to memorise that morning, and the second question, yes, I could do that one.

I started on the course sheet in front of me, a sheet we had to show first, he had to check that we hadn’t written anything secretly on that scrap paper, but everything was okay, a quick glance, he seemed to trust me. When I started scribbling on my course sheet, I saw the carbon copy of the aggressively sketched circuit that I had been trying to engrave in my brain that morning. I rubbed it gently with my pencil and everything became clear to me. Oh well, that’s how it went, and I glowed with satisfaction in the classroom. All the aggression, all the fear, all the tension left my shoulders, I solved both questions with the greatest of ease, ready to face the beast.

I could still hear him saying, as he wrote 12/20 in large letters on the board and addressed us, “You have to get this to pass. If you get less than this, don’t bother me during the holidays about a possible exception.” And with a slight grin, he summed it all up again, “Less than this means you have to repeat the year.”

I saw his look and grinned back warmly this time. The next victim left the arena bleeding; now it was my turn.

With my pen as my weapon and my enlightened mind as my shield, I was ready to battle his questions. I sat opposite him with unlikely kindness, controlled and calm, a mindful Zen master. The cool, surly body from which all humanity had drained sat in front of me and asked his questions in a very monotonous tone. I got the first question right, the second question was almost right, because I had forgotten the shortcut for BAR, the Base Address Register.

Then he started with his trick questions, but I defended myself as best I could, and the last question was the most subtle: ‘What is the difference between a gas plasma screen and, for example, that fluorescent tube hanging above you?” Yes, I managed that. I began my explanation very logically, explaining how there is a difference in terms of external construction, but that there is a similarity in terms of principle.

I scored 16/20 in this subject, one of my best scores, apart from psychology, where I scored the maximum because I was able to use myself as reference material.

Oh well, he wasn’t so bad. That artefact of a would-be professional in computer science and image technology. He was quite impressive, yes, just like my score.

The biggest challenges were yet to come: making my short film, writing a paper on German Expressionism and, finally, finding a soulmate.