You may have had the nightmare where you have to take a test you forgot to study for, but what about having to take a test on an entirely different subject than the one you studied for?
That was a real-life nightmare for students in Queensland, Australia, who, as The Associated Press reports, had been taught about the life of Roman emperor Augustus Caesar for an upcoming statewide ancient history exam that was actually about Julius Caesar.
The mix-up occurred across nine high schools and was only discovered days before the exam was scheduled to take place. The exam accounts for 25% of each student’s yearlong grade.
While some students started panic-studying about Julius Caesar, Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek announced that the affected classes would be exempt from the exam.
“I’m very unhappy about the situation,” Langbroek says, adding that the experience has been “extremely traumatic” for the students.
To be fair to the teachers, Augustus Caesar had been the topic of the exam for the last four years before switching to Julius Caesar for 2025. Still, the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority says it informed schools of the change two years ago.
At least no one spent the year studying Caesar salads.