180 Minutes...

I was  worried if I will quit this! No it dint happen. I came back to my place again! At last Caught up with blogging at least on  the last day of my summer vacation! Without meandering further, this post is about my experiences with the semester exam invigilation duties.

180 minutes…. Can you think of standing, starring, watching, roaming or sitting for 180 minutes? We college teachers do that twice a year! Yeah, I am talking about the 3 hrs examination duties assigned every semester! Teaching is so fun but examination duties looked so terrific initially to me.  After completing one year, I have started finding routes to enjoy exam duties too. I know exam duties are meant to  monitor students carefully  and  prevent them from engaging in malpractice. The fact is that only one in thousand will engage in such acts and when you get all right fellows in your hall, the world becomes idle for 180 minutes.

Let’s look at the pessimistic way first!  While the same 180 minutes can be spent joyfully watching a cinema, why can’t an examination duty be  spent joyfully? There are million answers to this question. To speed up completing this post I quote a few here.

1.    It is  so hard to shut mouth for a talkative person like me.
2.     It is so hard to control mind that too when a jokes pops up, it’s very hard to hold the laughter!
3.      It is so hard to be vetti when rest of your hall members are busy writing exam.
4.      It is so hard watching watch every one minute and wondering why its running so slow.
5.      IT IS SO HARD, DOT.

It’s not exactly 180 idle minutes. We will have about half an hour work of signing answer sheets, attendance sheets etc but after that?  Of course we have few optimistic options too.

     1.We can think of useful stuffs like research ideas, household planning etc.
     2. We can  empathize security guards  working at the apartments and restaurants.
      3. Watch students and their strange expressions.
      4. At least will have silent 180 minutes in our life history.

The third point is so interesting! You can see variety of emoticons better than whats app or facebook on students faces! Some will be tensed, mostly first year students.  One chap wanted something from his neighbor and asked my help. He said “round”, “instrument” and many more words.  I asked what for you want that? he said I want to draw a circle. His friend understood and gave him what he wanted. I said  “I think its called compass”. “He said oh yeah and smiled “.  The other day one student came late and asked for his subject question paper. He forgot his subject name. That day I had four different question papers. I asked him, “are you writing Physics ?”. He said yes. His friend said,”Hey you have wavelets and analysis da”. You won’t believe that guy was writing the exam for full 180 minutes.

Some students make us tense. They don’t want to sit idle. They will finish exam before one hour. The next one hour is a penalty for him and me. The rule is that a student is not allowed to exit the hall before completing full 180 minutes. He will keep on asking for time and he will definitely have watch with him. No matter how trendy and matured they are, in their outer appearance, they prove their age and innocence most of the time!

One day, I was assigned a hall where students were writing maths exam. I am sure, this maths has proved to be the toughest subject since stone age. We were told to be extra careful and check for bit materials which may contain formulas.   I was seriously checking one student’s wallet and his accessories. He said “why don’t check you check my paper first mam before checking me. My paper is still blank. If I had something I would have wrote something on it mam.”. I could only smile at him  and asked him to try recollecting and write the exam. Hope he got through that paper.

There are still so many interesting things which when written will lengthen this post and make it even more uninteresting!So, I end here. Hope I learn to enjoy and enjoy to learn many more  facts involved in the many upcoming  180 minutes!. Thanks for reading!