College
Shortly after, I applied for the admittance exam to the English department of the University. It was only one college that you applied for. You could have applied at a few other colleges that offered English but they were in far off towns in Romania and nobody would do that when we lived in the capital. Sometimes people living in the provinces would come to the capital to apply for college but not the other way around.
In order to apply, you had to show that you had passed the Baccalaureate exam. Score was not important. You did not have to be good to be admitted to take the exams. The exams were both written and oral. First you took the written exams and then the oral ones. You did not have to write any essays on your application to show that you had a “well-rounded background”. It did not cost anything. All you needed to do to take the exams was be a highschool graduate. You could have graduated the last one in highschool and it didn’t matter. For the boys, the pressure was even more intense because if they didn’t pass the entrance exam, they would go for mandatory military training for 16 months, usually far away from home, with just a couple of visits back home. Even boys that passed had to go for military training, but only for 9 months. So if they passed the entrance exam in 1973, they did not get to start their college studies until the fall of 1974.
The exam was in summer. A few days in advance, you had to find out what hall you had to take the exam in. Lists were posted at the front of the building. On the day of the exam, you came with your Buletin (your ID) and sat down. You were given some blank papers and told to write your name in the top right corner of the first paper. Then, a proctor would come to check your name on the paper against your name and picture in your ID booklet. Then you had to fold the corner over your name, covering it. The fold would be sealed and stamped by an official. When everybody was ready, the subject to write on the exam would be written on the board.
I had to take exams in English and Romanian. When you went to the University for languages, you had to specify a language which would be your primary subject (like your Major) and a secondary language (like a Minor). In my case, I picked Romanian because my German was not good at all.
I don’t remember what the subject was in the written exam for Romanian but I do remember that in English it was some kind of comparison between the poets Byron and Shelley. You had to write for about 3-4 hours on the subject. When you got out, you felt totally dizzy.
After the written exams, you took a break for a few days. In the meantime, the results were tabulated and again, posted, for everybody to see. And lists would be drawn with the people who would go on to the oral exams. You would be assigned a room, date and time when you had to show up to take the exam. When you stepped into the room, a few students waiting to take the exam would be already there. On the examiner’s desk, there would be a few dozen sheets of paper, face down. You had to pick one, as if playing the lottery. That was your exam. On the paper, there would be 2-3 short, very focused subjects that you had to talk about. Then you would be given a few pieces of draft paper and a pencil. You could sit down and prepare what you had to say. You did not have too long. While you took your time to prepare, other students were talking about their subjects.
Although I did very well in the written exams, I did not get the same excellent grades in the oral exams. It seems to me that the examiners were nit-picking and splitting hairs. Although my grades were not bad, they were not great either. What happened, I presume, is that in the oral exams, students that had connections in high places got much more lenient examiners. And thus they got excellent grades in the oral exams.In the end, when all scores were tabulated and a ranking was made, I placed too low to be admitted. We appealed. Every year, the number of students admitted would be different and also the lowest passing grade would differ. It all depended on what grades the students would get. They would be ranked according to the final average score and they would be admitted in the order of their grade. So, one year, one score may have been a passing score, whereas another year, it may have been a failing one.
Anyway, this failure was a terrible, terrible blow for me, especially since all my closest friends had been admitted to various colleges, including some to the English Department. After all, all we were thinking of in highschool was to get into college. That was an objective in itself. We did not care what would happen after college. We did not think of money, fame, glory. We just wanted to get into college. That was the supreme achievement. And not getting in was a terrible, shameful thing. The blow to my pride was unbearable. My grades in highschool, including the final exit exam (baccalaureate) had been higher than most of my friends’, yet they got into college and I didn’t. And they were pitying me. They came to visit me as if to offer their condolences. And I couldn’t stand it. I became more and more despondent and one day took a handful of sleeping pills and drank a good quantity of heavy liquor. Pretty soon I felt very sick and got scared. At that time we were living in my grandfather’s huge house and had to share bathroom facilities with some tenants. On my way to the bathroom down the hall, I fainted and one tenant who was around, caught me. The next thing I remember was being in a hospital bed with my mother sick with worry beside me.
Later on, she told me that when she heard what I did, she went to the University and told me that if something happened to me, she would break all of their windows. Nobody dared say anything because they could see she was overcome with grief and fury. Luckily, I was OK, and resolved never to try anything like that. I also decided that I was too mad to apply for the next examinations (the following year).
(to be continued)
Simona Georgescu
