11B Common Cold
Channel: timtak1
Date: 13/10/2013

I caught a cold at just the wrong time last year. I started to cough a week before exams. Then on the Friday I got a sore throat. On Monday morning, the first day of exams, I had a headache, a runny nose, and a horrible fever. 
Most of my exams were on the first two days of exam week. It was freezing outside. So I stayed in bed and missed all of them. Also, I was scared that it would be too expensive, so I did not go and see a doctor. I did not know that I could go and see a doctor in the university medical center for free.
Then when I asked my teachers to let me take the exams again, they said that I had to have a doctor's certificate. Unfortunately, when I found out that I needed proof, I was felling well again. I went to a local clinic but my symptoms were gone, so the doctor could not confirm that I had been ill. In the end I failed the exams, and had to retake 5 courses. Fortunately, I passed them the next semester.
  By the way, do you know the reason why we are more likely to catch a cold during winter? It is not because being cold makes us more vulnerable to infection, but because in winter we spend more time in rooms with other people. 

Resources to support Timothy Takemoto's "English for Spies" textbook which will one day be available with an "unbound licence" (photocopiable resource, net redistribution fine with link ) at tekisuto.com