Survival of the Fittest

Ever look on facebook and see people sharing their thoughts such as: ‘omg so pumped for my exam’?

Ever feel a feeling of adrenaline rush right before your exam?

In the past, cavemen used to get adrenaline rushes because they needed to focus on hunting. Adrenaline pumped their bodies up, allowing them to run faster and have faster reflexes.

Nowadays, we use don’t adrenaline to hunt food, but to focus during our exams.

It’s a strange concept, but I think on a very subconscious level, we tend to correlate doing well on such exams to money, and therefore our physiological needs.

Even stranger is the fact that people think about ‘FREEDOM’ when they finish their exams. Back in the old days, ‘freedom’ was linked to being able to do whatever we pleased. For example slaves would lack ‘freedom’ because if they wanted to stop working, they weren’t allowed to. Having an exam can’t really stop us from going on youtube; but it can influence us to study. Yet we think about that as a restriction on our freedom, even though logically it isn’t.

It goes to show how much we prioritize examinations in our lives on both a biological and psychological level.