Living Museum of Learning
Lambert and the Pet Pufferfish Exam Reward
Lambert was in Grade 6 when he told me he had a major exam in two days.
He came with a simple question:
"Is there any trick to doing well on exams?"
He also mentioned a reward from his mother:
If he did well, he would get a pet pufferfish.
He showed me videos of the fish inflating when it got angry.
He was clearly excited.
Instead of giving him a “shortcut,” I told him something different.
Exams are not something to be gamed.
They are something to be lived through—like training.
If you treat them as tricks, there will always be too many exams in life for tricks to scale.
I shared my own story:
During my own high school entrance exams, I spent the final week reading comic books.
Not because I was careless.
But because I had already done a full year of preparation, and there was simply nothing more to “cram.”
That week was strangely calm.
Lambert kept returning to the pufferfish.
"Look, it gets angry and puffs up like this!"
There was something honest and funny in the way he described it.
No anxiety.
No overthinking.
Just curiosity mixed with anticipation.
We spent the rest of the session doing what we usually do:
typing practice, a bit of C++, small explorations.
Nothing dramatic.
Just steady work.
Exams will come and go.
But the mindset with which a child meets pressure is formed early.
What matters is not finding a trick to win one test.
It is building the ability to stay steady across many of them.
In the end, I told him:
"Good luck with your exam. Just stay relaxed."
Sometimes the most important preparation is not more intensity.
It is less fear.
Children can approach exams with curiosity instead of anxiety when pressure is reframed.
Consistent learning builds confidence that no last-minute strategy can replace.
A calm mindset often outperforms short-term exam tactics in the long run.