My grandmother’s beads went with me into every examination hall I ever sat in. I never once opened a paper without holding them first.
How they came to me
They were not given ceremonially. They were simply the rosary that was in the house, and when I ran to the chapel at seven years old they were what I picked up on the way out.
After that they were mine by use rather than by gift, which is the more durable of the two arrangements.
Not a charm
I want to be careful here, because there is a version of this story that is superstition, and I have no interest in telling it.
The beads did not make the answers appear. They did not improve my recall or steady my hand. What they did was settle a question before the paper was turned over — the question of whether the next three hours belonged to me alone.
An offering, not a claim
The hours I had put in were real. I studied longer than anyone I knew, often for examinations that were still months away, and I have never pretended that the results arrived without them.
But holding the beads was a way of saying that the work was an offering rather than a claim — that whatever came back on the result sheet had been handed over long before it was printed. That distinction has kept me sane through every professional examination since, and there have been a number of them.
Where they are now
The same pocket. Slightly shorter than they were, because a decade of being gripped in an examination hall does eventually tell on a string.
I am told that is sentimental. It is, and I would recommend it.