HSC Stress and the Huck Finn Disaster

I have been reading this week about the high school students from Queensland who were taught the wrong texts for their graduating high school exam – a truly awful situation. I won’t get into the complex and perhaps legal specifics of the case, but it reminded me of a terrible mistake my classmates and I made during our Year 12 trial exams.

Back then, we were sitting the trial exams—an in-house test run for the actual public exams. I can’t recall if it was Year 11 or 12, but we were assigned to read Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Now, I understand years later that it’s an American cultural classic—an important book that tackles serious themes like racism and identity. But as teenagers, we all thought, “Why are we reading a kids’ book for Year 12?” Consequently, a lot of us simply didn’t read it, even though it was a prescribed text. Our assumption was that the HSC would offer enough choice that we could skip Huck Finn and just write about something “more important” or “serious,” like Shakespeare.

I’ll never forget the moment we walked into the exam hall. We opened the paper and saw the instruction: “You must answer a question about Huckleberry Finn.” It was compulsory.

A wave of panic washed over the room. We looked at each other, eyes wide, silently asking: “Did you read it? No, I didn’t read it! Oh, my God!” As with most things in my life, I managed to bluff my way through the essay based on hearsay from things the teacher said in the classroom.

Later, we agreed it was our teachers making us learn a painful lesson the hard way. No shortcuts.