The Day Before the First

Tomorrow's going to be the first day of my major examinations. It's hard to grasp how after eighteen years, and after these two weeks and a half have passed, I can burn my books in a bonfire and it won't matter anymore.

I perhaps shouldn't even be writing up this post right now, but I was reading a few poems preparing for my unseen commentary tomorrow and came across this, which I felt was the perfect and most timely advice quelling my imminent freak-out (cue Chic's Le Freak and replace it with "not chic) before my literature examination.

Introduction to Poetry  By Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem  and hold it up to the light  like a colour slide
 or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out,   or walk inside the poem’s room  and feel the walls for a light switch. 
I want them to waterski   across the surface of a poem  waving at the author’s name on the shore.
 But all they want to do   is tie the poem to a chair with rope   and torture a confession out of it. 
 They begin beating it with a hose   to find out what it really means.