You'd think exams would be easy--you don't have to prepare anything, you don't need to think of a lesson plan, you don't have to talk and demonstrate. You just sit there for an hour and a half and chill.
Truth be told, I find exams more annoying than not--you have to show up early in order to control the positions of the desks and which ones different students sit in; you have to make everyone respect the fact that silence means silence; and you're stuck with nothing to do for 1.5 hours but carefully watching them and stopping them from cheating.
I like to slip off my shoes and sit on the teacher's desk, resting my excruciating hawkish gaze on each and every one of them. No one cheats in my classes--and gets away with it. I've failed students for it before.
On the other hand, some students aren't incorrigible cheaters. Many do their own work because they are incredibly perfectionistic and terrified of making a mistake. It's almost funny to watch them work. They finish incredibly quickly because they have over-studied all their lives; they then spend the next hour frantically re-reading and re-re-reading their answers, rooting out any mistakes, actual or perceived, and becoming increasingly stressed as time goes on.
I find it almost funny in light of the fact that for all their perfectionism, they still make mistakes such as forgetting to capitalize the pronoun "I", forgetting how to use English punctuation, forgetting the -s on 3rd person singular verbs, or just writing trite expressions like "he will be go" or "In Cambodia have many problems." They spend an hour whiting-out and re-writing a paragraph that I'm going to spend 10 seconds reading. There is no forest, only trees.
I shouldn't laugh at them...but my attitude towards academia and test-taking has always been flippant at best. I can assure you I'm not going to grade them on how perfect their letter "d" looks.
And then you get the students who ask bizarre questions. This evening, one of my students asked me, "Teacher, do I have to capitalize a word at the beginning of a sentence?"
Me: "Yes, the first letter is always capitalized."
Student: "But teacher, I don't want to capitalize."
Me: "Then you'll be wrong."
Student: "But do I have to capitalize??"
Me: "If it needs capitalization, do it." (By this time other students are taking advantage of the situation and beginning to exchange whispers).
Student: "But teacher..."
Me: "If it needs capitalization, then capitalize." (Sits stoically and refuses to respond to any further inquiries).
I'm still shaking my head over that one. And I get to go through this every two to four weeks.
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