I Should Have Failed My Degree

Two months ago, I was really struggling with my faith when I was sitting my final exams, and I came across this website where the testimonies of others in my same situation uplifted me. I was trusting God for a huge miracle, and I promised that if He would answer my prayer I would come back and share my testimony in the hope that it would also encourage others.

I had always been a pretty good student and I didn’t really struggle to get good grades whenever I studied. This all changed in my final year of university. When I was studying for my first semester exams, I realised that I would constantly forget everything that I had studied, no matter how many times I went over it. Once my exam dates started to approach, I became very anxious and prayed constantly for God to help me, though the problem persisted.

In the end I sat my exams, yet I did feel a sense of peace as I wrote them. As a result, I felt that God had answered my prayers and that I would still possibly get a fairly good grade. However, my results were the worst that I had ever received before, and I averaged 38%.

I really struggled to come to terms with this, and this experience really made me try to seek God more. For context, I had been brought up in a Christian household by Godfearing parents who prayed for me constantly. Though I had accepted Christ, my Christian life still felt quite meaningless because I did not really understand the nature of God. I particularly struggled to understand what it meant to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). I thought this meant that I should just make sure that I didn’t sin and hopefully God will answer my prayers. I had no understanding of the concept of faith. I saw answered prayers as more of a game of chance, maybe God would answer them, maybe He wouldn’t. As a result, I never really relied on God, I just planned my own things and tried to study as hard as I could so that I could rely on myself.

The morning of exams… Throughout my life I would just pray and hope that God might hear me and give me some help, but this was a last-minute consideration. I was really just trusting myself to do well since I felt that I couldn’t rely on God and be sure that he would help me.

This was how I approached every exam and major decision in my life until I got those terrible grades where I averaged 38%. That day I realised that it was not by my power or my might, I had not considered that I would fail in revising for exams, so the experience forced me to really seek God and His help. It was not easy. Years of treating God as an afterthought had left me with a lot of pride in myself. I even felt that God “owed” me good grades since I trusted in Him like He asks us to.

I tried to make up for the bad grades in the second semester but because I needed to score really high grades in my next exams to get a 2:1. I became very anxious and depressed. My studying even became worse. I was terrified each time I revised because I felt that it was impossible to get the grades I needed to make up for the last semester.

On top of all of this I had a dissertation to submit that I was working on. In the days leading to my dissertation submission, I started to feel like I was just working too slowly, no matter what I wrote I felt that I was making no progress. On the day of my submission, I started to have severe anxiety attacks that made me stutter and shake to the point where I could no longer think, or type. I prayed and my parents also prayed and tried to help me submit but due to the shaking I could not submit my dissertation in time. I was devastated. At this point I knew that I was suffering from demonic attacks that would sabotage every effort I made with regards to my university work. I also knew that I would not be able to pass my exams for the second semester, so I decided to pause my studies and start afresh the following year.

I prayed through the summer break and tried to study my Bible more so that I could get to know God more. It was hard because I still felt disappointed from the last year, but I really learned what it meant to have faith and not rely on yourself. I started the final year again and it seemed to be going well until I started to experience the same forgetfulness when studying. I became very anxious again and prayed so much. My parents also prayed for me, and the Holy Spirit comforted me and filled me with joy that enabled me to continue to revise and sit the exams.

I expected good grades this time, but I only averaged around 50% – a 2:2, when I was aiming for at least 65%. I could not believe it. I was so disappointed that I stopped praying as I felt that God was ignoring me, or even punishing me. I was so sad that I was essentially repeating what happened the last year. It took months before I started to read the Bible again and trust His words and rebuild my faith. Reading testimonies from this page really helped.

Despite this, I experienced those same demonic attacks in my second semester. I had the same stuttering and shaking anxiety attack on the day of my dissertation submission (the second time round), my parents and I prayed intensely, and I was able to submit with 2 minutes to spare. I also experienced the same forgetfulness in all of my semester 2 exams no matter how much I prayed, but I trusted God regardless.

My exams were terrible. For one exam I did not know the answer to a single question! I was expecting that I would finish the year with a third class or a 2:2 if I was lucky. But I prayed for a 2:1. Recently I opened my grades, and I am graduating with a 2:1!!! I didn’t do well in my exams, but I received an excellent grade for my dissertation that I almost didn’t submit which pushed my overall grade up!

I know that this post is long, but I hope that it will let you know that God is a miracle worker, and works in very mysterious ways, but we must have FAITH. If I looked at my situation from a human perspective I should have failed my degree. I was hoping that God would help me with my revision or in the exams, but He didn’t – this was to teach me patience and faith so that I could know that He was the God of the impossible.