Fuddland

I’ve been earning some pocket money as an examination invigilator over the last couple of days — twelve quid an hour for sitting or standing around watching people either furiously scribbling or staring into space is not to be sniffed at.

Yesterday evening’s one took place at the Student Health Centre, where I watched over two poor souls who were forced to take their exams despite being ill enough to be admitted to Sick Bay. Still, they didn’t actually look all that sick to me; they had no issues and I managed to read an entire novel in that one sitting.

Today’s was more active — over a hundred students, three different papers being sat, and plenty of questions: requests for the toilet [escorted by the porters]; requests for the dictionary [allowed]; requests to get their ruler/eraser from their bags [not allowed, no matter how many times you ask me — and no you can’t borrow one from someone else either].

The following instructions proved extremely difficult to follow for a lot of people: answer each question in a separate answer-book [written in bold on the exam paper and announced at the beginning]; if you finish early, do not leave your seat until your script has been collected [because you’ve probably forgotten to fill in the front cover with your details]. And I did pity the poor girl who tried to take away a supplementary answer-booklet because it contained “rough work”. Anything they’ve written in must be handed in, so I had to take it back and tie it to her main script — noting first that all she’d written on it was something like, “I am so lost in this exam. I think I’ll write out a song instead”, followed by two full pages of lyrics.

Still, at least she didn’t argue when I said I needed to have it, unlike the chap who insisted his supplementary booklet contained only rough work. I told him to cross out any work he didn’t want considered for marking. He said that the entire booklet was rough work. “Then you’ll have to cross it all out,” I was forced to tell him.

And finally, a round of applause please for the fellow who sat the wrong exam and didn’t realise until an hour into it — it does pay to read the preamble before the first question.

#1

Daisy | 2005 / 01 / 13 – 09:10

There’s a lot to be said for studying exam technique alongside your main subject methinks. Did you enjoy Amsterdam? The Amazon reviews are “interesting”…

#2

David | 2005 / 01 / 13 – 09:55

Re #1: I have to say that I wasn’t all that impressed with Amsterdam — it was pretty disappointing after enjoying Enduring Love and Atonement so much. It’s hard to say why without spoiling the story, as you might have seen from the Amazon reviews, but I think it rushed to a conclusion that could well have been thought up first, with not enough time then spent on shaping a believable lead-up.

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