Friday 16 May 2014

random Friday musings on the subject of exams.

I stand at the back in the exam halls and write lists. There are shopping lists, lists of who is doing what and when this week, planning lists, packing lists for scout camp, lists of gardening plans, lists of quick and easy dinners, lists of photos to take, and heaven forbid to print, lists of cakes to bake, and meals to cook, lists of phone calls to make (including the plumber Again, who still hasn't come to mend the hot bathroom tap....) I write lists of the lists. Some of them are on scraps of paper, some are in my head. All of them are to distract me from the fact that I really want a cup of tea.

The caretaker comes to see if it is too hot, and do we need some fans. Several of the students are wearing thick sweatshirts. I decline the fans but open another window. These are AS level students, sixth formers don't wear uniform and so are dressed in eclectic attire. Two of them have taken off their shoes. I avoid walking near their desks. One girl is wearing some kind of laced up corset over her shirt. I can't decide if it's a back brace for medical reasons, but it looks too stylish for that, and yet it looks far too uncomfortable for a fashion item.  I decide that perhaps as she is a history student it might help her to be in character, as far I can tell we've moved on from the dark ages, but who knows.

Is it so wrong to notice that the students doing child development are wearing a LOT more make up than those sitting the history exam.

This exam is in the sixth form common room. Someone thought is was a good idea to paint one wall lime green and all the woodwork and window sills purple. It was not. It is a recipe for a migraine. It must be a rite of passage for common rooms though, I recall our's had a giant Danger Mouse mural on it. No one ever had to sit an exam in there though.....

8 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh I bloody love this post. I had a Roland rat mug when i was in the 6th form, my three great mates had RRats friends on theirs. No purple windowsills. Ours were rotting and you could just push your finger into the wood... if you sat next to the window in the winter you could feel the wind coming in. Please will you do The Most Bizarre Outfit of the Day post whenever you invigilate? It could be big...
    Ax

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  2. I love your description! I hadn't thought about it for years, but your thoughts on the paint colours reminded me of several rooms in my school that were painted in this thick drippy germolene pink gloss paint, it was horrible!! It was also sometimes combined with this dirty yellow for some reason. Obviously colour choice was not important! xx

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  3. Oh my. I just finished a week of invigilating Advanced Placement exams. Lists and poems were constructed in my head, never to see the light of day. I calculated (roughly) percentages - left hand vs right hand writers, those wearing closed shoes vs open shoes, boys vs girls in literature and math. And I doodled.

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  4. Lime green and purple, shudder. That colour combo is enough to bring on a bilious attack. Hope you made it through o.k.
    Anne xx

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  5. I am so pleased not to have to sit exams any more. In any room. I cannot remember the walls of our common room at all, only that the floor was perpetually sticky.

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  6. This is a lovely, honest and very funny post - your thoughts were probably what any of us would have been thinking in those circumstances! Lists? I even re-write the same list, only neater and smaller, in order for it to look less daunting! Who am I kidding! xCathy

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  7. This is great and very funny, it takes me back to my sixth form years and made me smile a lot. Happy weekend, I hope the sun is shining for you. - Annie

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  8. Your make-up comment is the reason I now have coffee in my lap, do please warn a girl when you're about to make her chortle Tess ;)

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