Examination
Looking at the links in my calendar to the right, I see that I’ve been quiet this week.
It’s because of exams. They’re keeping us very busy.
Last term I thought I’d seen the most greivous monstrocity that the university could commit: we had an exam where one question had only 15 marks instead of the prescribed 20. Yesterday I supervised one where they had failed to photocopy the last page of the exam and so all of question 5 was entirely missing. :rolleyes:
And when this is done, we’re moving straight into another two weeks of intensive Cisco training. Wish me luck!
The Invigilator Says:
And, to add insult to injury, we couldn’t get through on the phone to the University (we don’t find out about this bullshit until we open the envelopes with the exams in, which we don in the exam room of course) and when we finally did, they made excuses.
In the afternoon my colleague came and showed me a printout of an email he had recieved, sent by the univeristy at 12.20 (ten minutes before the end of the exam) with the text of the missing question 5 pasted into it. Hah! What do they expect us to do with that!?
In a staff meeting lately one of my colleagues and I were complaining of boredom with that same univeristy. (we were also beored of the meeting) I wrote on a sheet of paper something long and highly profound about how boredom is a personal reaction to circumstances not caused by external influences, blah blah blah, and passed it to my colleague (who shal remain nameless as my students read this). The colleague wrote on it and pased it back to me…
**Fuck them!** — it said. :O
March 23rd, 2005 at 8:46 amLydia Says:
I like your colleague! What happened with question 5 in the end? I’m on a field trip which is not remotely boring because I dont have to think about exam boards and I get to see voles and trees and wade about in streams! Lots of love and hugs from me in a happy mood
March 24th, 2005 at 11:05 pmMark Says:
It can’t be a field trip if you have internet access.
Or does saying that show that Im living in the past?
Question 5 we left. The university will have to make some allowances I think.
But the worst case was the Unix II exam that we had yesterday morning. I cant evn begin to catalogue the attrocities it contained. For a start more than half the questions were on the subjects of backing up data, backup tools, backup policies, etc. Then there were questions asking for the explanation of commands that don’t exist. And there were no solutions for some questions (we checked the solutions to see if there were clues about what the questions should say. these solutions, I shouild add, are photocopies of handwritten sheets that have been crossed out and scribbled on …) the list goes on… questions about MSDOS… you name it, a catalogue of examination malpractise.
The students did well though, Ive looked at their papers and they have managed very well to make senstible guesses about the questions thaty hadn’t a clue about. I’m proud of them for that because I have ben trying all term to get them to make good guesses and come up with their own ideas.
Bloody glad term’s over though.
March 25th, 2005 at 8:14 am