Intimidation and invigilators.

Haiku-a-day:

May 16^th

Intimidation

is the definition of

finals in Britain.

So my haikus are lacking, yes.  But I've got 18 pages of haikus, so I'm getting a little tired of them.  I think I can let it slide. 

Today I took my Museum Studies final exam!!!  I am one class away from becoming a senior in college.  How weird is that?!  But I won't be escaping to the "real" world just yet, oh no, I've decided I like to be tortured, so I'll be applying to grad school next year.  Where exactly?  My first hope is Madison.  Money-wise it makes sense (in-state tuition).  I haven't really looked into too many other places besides Illinois-Urbana-Champaign.     

Back to the present, the British do finals in the most intimidating way I've ever seen!  And I thought finals at Madison could be intimidating?!  Wow.  So, firstly, we're given directions ahead of time for how to prepare, what to bring, etc.  No pencils and absolutely no phones.  Either leave them at home or turn them off.  When Sara, Rachel, and I left St. Marks to head to campus, we saw neat lines of people in front of the E.C. Stoner building (gym/conference auditorium).  They were all in line to get into their finals.  I list this as an odd sight because back at Madison, you'd see students in the halls or hanging out in the classroom itself.  Not the case here.  It was about 20 minutes until the final began and they were all nicely waiting outside.

When we got to the building where our final was, we found our class sitting in the lounge area.  Soon after, a woman came down and told us to head into the room.  Everything was very organized.  We had to look at a seating chart posted on the door, drop off our bags and coats at the front of the room and take our pens and student IDs to our assigned desks.  

Here's what the room looked like.  Four rows of chairs, 25 in each row, so it was quite a long room.  My class is on the smaller side (as are most here in Leeds), so we only took up the first 2 rows of 25.  Because they sat us in the first two rows, a lot of us were in the very back.  I don't see why they didn't just make it so that everyone was in the front.  Anywho, the "invigilator" (proctor back at Madison) gave us instructions in a very demanding tone.  There was silence as soon as everyone had entered the room.  With instructions over and pens at the ready, the invigilator said we could start our essays.  About 4 people besides the chief invigilator walked back and forth among the two rows the entire hour, making sure that no one cheated (though if you think about it, it's kind of hard to cheat on an essay exam where people have a choice of 4 topics, so you don't know the topic those around you chose...).  I found it distracting to have the invigilators walking past me so often.

Silence reigned the whole sixty minutes and no one was allowed to leave until they called time.  I'm used to being able to get up and turn in your exam whenever you finish, no matter the time.  I know I did well.  The question I wanted was one of the choices and I felt completely prepared and remembered perfectly names, dates, important events, authors, etc.  I still think that it was intimidating simply because of the circumstances.  It was truly Harry Potter style.  =)

On a side note, another friend of mine from this class told me today before we went into the exam that she too had May 10th written in her notebook as the date for when our essay was due.  She told me that it was my freak-out post on facebook that saved her from turning in her essay late!  Yay me for freaking out!!  I helped saved several people's grades!!!  Thank you God!