Against everyone's seemingly good advice I decided to give blood just hours prior to taking a midterm. I have never really had any issues with feeling sick or in poor health after giving blood, and since I was told the later spots were full, I decided I would go for it.

This had to be my single worst donation experience to date. The first step, printing my basic info like name an blood type wasn't even carried out correctly. My mini physical and background check went equally poorly, as the person wrote down all sorts of wrong and erroneous information. This was followed up by a brief visit to the donation chair where a Romanian flabotamist in training could not find my extremely obvious vein. To my relief I was called away to once again restate my travel history and clear up the prior confusions. I returned only to be greeted by the same Romanian woman who promptly informed me that she was not allowed to perform the procedure without supervision and then scrubbed my arm with iodine for what seemed an eternity. Directly following my iodine bath she looked around sheepishly and stabbed me hard with a needle, no supervision to speak of. The supervisor arrived to discover that the needle was not in far enough and the sphygmomanometer (read blood pressure cuff) was leaking. My usual 4 minute donation time sky-rocketed to a 13 minute marathon of frustration. Each time the sphygmomanometer deflated the blood flow stopped, and I assure you it deflated rather quickly. To top it off the Romanian woman kept walking away, so the flow would remain stopped for some time. To add insult to injury the woman kept putting the blood bag on the floor for some reason which moved the line which wiggled the loose needle.

All in all I found that despite the horrible donation experience, donating before the test wasn't so bad. I didn't feel any effect of blood quantity on my testing experience. Unless of course my unusually bad handwriting during the exam was an artifact of blood loss.

My conclusion is that giving blood is fine just before an exam, just avoid Romanian trainees and make sure to answer all questions clearly and concisely. I'd recommend the experience. Two thumbs up. Fun for the whole family.