Thursday, November 09, 2017

Sick of exams already

What's with all the coughing? Sounds like someone's trying to hack up a lung, and those two guys seem to be coughing a call-and-response. Some sort of code? 

Oh look, the first cougher wants to go out for a drink of water. Sure sounds like he needs one, but is this just a ploy to allow him to look at his notes? 

How would I distinguish between a real cough and a fake cough? I don't generally bring a stethoscope to class, and I did not get a PhD in literature so I could become the Cough Police.

And now the other coughing guy is nonchalantly leaving the room without a word. Maybe he wants to look up that important bit of video on the course management system. Too bad I closed those links five minutes ago.

Only 20 minutes in and one student is already turning in his paper. Does he realize that there are questions on both sides of the page?

Now the coughing guys want to rummage in their backpacks for tissues. What if a clever student prepared a box of tissues with notes written in tiny print on each one? And then what if the professor felt a sneeze coming on and reached for the student's tissues?  (No, I don't want to be the tissue police either.)

40 minutes in and only a few students are left. None of them are coughing, sneezing, blowing their noses, or asking to leave the room. They're just writing. That's what I like to see.

Now I have a big stack of exams sitting on the desk, all of them thoroughly coughed on. How many germs can fit on the head of a pen? Now I'm suddenly hoping that all those coughs were fake. (If I find a chunk of lung on any of those papers, I quit.)

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