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More invigilating
June 8th, 2006 at 20:35
I like invigilating. It’s the easiest job in the world, short of being the sort of celebrity who gets paid just for standing next to a product, or perhaps some sort of assassin (it’s not like you can kill someone too much afterall).
The following takes place between June 6th and June 8th, on the days of the GCSE English examinations. My name is James O’Malley, and this is going to be the easiest job in my life. Tick, tock, tick, tock, etc.
Picture the scene: hundreds of kids working hard on the most important exams of their lives, scribbling away in the insane summer heat. With me standing at the side of the room looking bored. Oddly, it wasn’t as involved as I thought it would be, as only a handful of people have needed my expert help. In three days of invigilating, I have done the following:
- Escourted two people to the toilets, and humorously exclaiming “I can’t see any answerbooks in there”. Both times.
- Got someone a tissue.
- Got someone some extra paper.
- Found out the candidate number of a student.
- Tried to look important and like I was doing something to earn the silly money I’m being paid when the head teacher unexpectedly came into the hall.
Yeah, it’s a thrilling job. And no doubt the following exciting anecdotes will make it seem even more thrilling.
Today there was a girl who looked like she was a bit worried and had her hand up. I sauntered over prepared to tackle questions about the paper reference, when she simply did a sort of “whispering scream” at me- y’know what I mean, like when someone whispers, but manipulates their voice as if they were shouting. “Spider! … SPIDER!”, she said, before I grasped what she was trying to tell me. I had to go beyond the call of duty and capture a spider that was on the corner of her desk, and escourt it outside. As I was carrying it out, another invigilator (covigilator?) asked me why I hadn’t killed it. It was because of reasons I gave you the gist of the other day. I went rogue, and I was breaking protocol. I took the hostile (aka ’spider’) outside of the building, myself having to leave the building to do this, breaking every rule in the book.
During exams yesterday, I was in the main assembly hall, which aside from hosting exams, had hosted the end of year “prom” a few weeks (days?) earlier. As the exam got started, a helium-filled, star-shaped, mirrored-silver balloon slowly fell from the ceiling and on to the desk of a student. The student looked slightly bemused, to say the least.
Other than that, literally nothing has happend. I literally got paid yesterday for having a nice sit down for two hours. For a few minutes I attempted to look busy, by standing up and moving my head in a security-camera fashion, but gave up and slacked when I noticed the other invigilators sitting down.
It’s been quite nice having some time to think over the big questions in life with few distractions. Yesterday, whilst the A-level Dance written exam was taking place, I was pondering whether persuing a pragmatic foreign policy tangibly benefits a greater number of people than one based on morals and ideology. (My conclusion was that it wouldn’t). Then I tried to think of some good fart jokes for the blog and wondered who would be kicked out of Big Brother.
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