Question

Why does helen call examinations the chief bugbears?

Answer 1

While Helen Keller had a sincere and lifelong love of learning instilled in her by Miss Sullivan, she did find test-taking at Radcliffe challenging. This caused her to muse on her exam experience in her memoir. Like many students before and since, Helen would study diligently and cram her head with knowledge, feeling confident she knew her material. However, once an exam was in front of her, she would panic and blank out. A bugbear is a torment or thorn in one's side, and because of her test anxiety, Helen found the exams a constant irritant or bugbear. As she writes:
The facts you have garnered with such infinite trouble invariably fail you at a pinch.
Keller used, for example, an exam question asking about a man named Huss to illustrate her point:
Huss? Who was he and what did he do? The name looks strangely familiar. You ransack your budget of historic facts much as you would hunt for a bit of silk in a rag bag. You are sure it is somewhere in your mind near the top
Keller differentiated between learning to elevate one's mind and soul and the kind of cramming that she did at Radcliffe to keep up with the other students and prepare for exams. While she was glad to go to college, which had long been a dream of hers, she wished for more time to process her knowledge and less pressure to achieve arbitrary goals like passing exams.

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