My Final Exam Was Visual Arts

It’s a bright, hot afternoon, and I’m sitting in Campos Coffee next to my university campus, sipping a piping hot mocha on my lunch break between induction classes. The air hums with conversation, but in my mind, I’m somewhere else. I’m back in that exam hall. My final exam. The last time walking out of the grounds a student.

It was Visual Arts—some multiple-choice questions, two essays. My hands ached from writing, but my heart couldn’t shake the feeling of how fleeting it all was. I suddenly remembered every class of VA. I remember photography and spending lunch times in the red room developing film, or ceramics in 2008 and the feeling of clay moulding between my warmed hands.

Every word brought me closer to the end. The final time checking my name on each sheet of paper, just as I had done for the five exams before it—but this time, for the last time. We never think about the final time until we’re in it.

I was in the third desk from the front, fifth row from the exit doors. It was midday, and outside, the heat pressed against the bricks. When we walked out, the courtyard was silent. A Thursday—sport afternoon—so the other students were already gone. It was eerie, like the school was holding its breath. Everyone disappeared in different directions, to their cars, to walk home. Is that really it? I thought. Something about it felt anticlimactic. It felt real, though, like in moments where something life changing happens but there’s no dramatic gasps from an audience and no music plays. The ground beneath you does not shake and the sky remains a perfect, vast, blue.

I have never written about a boy in these posts before, and I won’t name names now. But that afternoon, he was waiting for me outside the exam hall. He had already finished his exams, so he had walked from his house, all the way to school, just to wait for me. I knew that much.

He held a bunch of wildflowers, sapphire blue, and an envelope with a letter inside. We walked halfway home together. I will always remember that day. Nothing ever really happened between us, me and him, but there was something always there. I remember he once told me my eyes are like wildflowers, and it was lyrics from a song by Ben Howard called Keep Your Head Up. He had said the song reminds him of me.

Now, sitting here, I feel very far away from her. The girl who walked out of that exam hall, out of high school. Away from it. Her.

I also remember the day my acceptance letter came through. The email arrived first. My dad was working in his study, and it was just the two of us home. Journalism and Media. My top pick. I walked down the hall, shared the news, and then that was it. A door had quietly opened.

2 weeks ago, my mum came with me to orientation to help with paperwork. I had to choose my electives. It was overwhelming—so many options, all these forms, and I didn’t even know who I was yet. I still don’t now. I remember shrugging, ink staining my fingers.

"I guess I like film?"

The queue was getting longer. Without thinking too much, I ticked two more: Theatre. Something about writing. Done. Whatever.

I’m looking forward to the lectures. The structure of university. The tutorials. I like how separate yet intimate it feels—students passing each other on spiral staircases, meeting in the courtyard, disappearing into classrooms. I like the idea of meeting new people, people from entirely different neighborhoods, international students from worlds I’ve never known. I look forward to the way my thoughts will change shape, how my ideas will stretch and shift. I wonder how it will all look in different seasons.

I’ll finish this burning lava soon and get the train home from Central. I’ll watch the way the sun filters through the trees, feel the weight of my tote bag, full of new books and textbooks, and notice how time has changed.

3:45 is no longer after-school time. It’s just the afternoon.

There’s no rush. There’s no uniform. It all feels seamless, but how many days did we move through to get here? How many handwritten notes memorized, how many difficult, stressful, endless days? And then others that were effortless, fun, free, when we never wanted to leave.

I think back now to the boy who gave me those flowers, and inside the envelope were loose sheets of parchment. Drawings. Me. Pieces of myself, captured in graphite. My own face, meeting my gaze—or looking right past me.

To be seen is a profound thing.

On the train, I catch my reflection in the window when we pass under a tunnel. My eyes, searching—like a deer in headlights. But in those sketches, they were something else entirely. They were me, but through another’s eyes.

It reminded me, an over thinker, that I exist in minds outside my own. That may feel worrying to some, but to me it’s extremely comforting.

I trust in this next chapter.

I trust in these eyes of mine, in my thoughts, in my ideas. I trust in how I will change.

And I trust in who I will become, in the eyes of all the people I have yet to meet.