Your exam stories

toberodiMon 19/05/08 18:22

It's GCSE time again, and when they talk about it on the radio, I get the creeping horrors. All-too vividly the memories return of walking in to the Main Hall with a clear plastic bag (like taking toiletries onto a plane now!), a lucky gonk, trembling hands, and a leaden stomach.

Everyone has an Exam Story. Were you the hapless individual whose folding table collapsed? Did your calculator die on you during a crucial calculation? Did your lucky gonk have a clearer idea of what was going on in "The Merchant Of Venice" than you did?

You may turn your papers over now.

toberodiMon 19/05/08 18:22

My exam story is from GCSE English Language. Due to some clash with another subject they'd changed the timing of the exam so it was different from what was printed on the front of the paper. Half way through what could have been the finest bit of English prose since Shakespeare laid quill to parchment, we were told to stop writing. I nearly had a stroke on the spot! I just had time to scrawl "TIME TROUBLE" underneath my masterpiece before it was taken away from me.

Scarred for life, I am. I still have Exam Dreams if I'm stressed about something.

bbbracknellMon 19/05/08 18:24

Not a story as such, but I always used to ask for extra paper really early on (even if I didn't need it) to try and freak the others out.

toberodiMon 19/05/08 18:24

quoting > "Not a story as such, but I always used to ask for extra paper really early on (even if I didn't need it) to try and freak the others out."

Bastard.

duncanMon 19/05/08 18:34

Oooo exams.....

I have lost count of the number of them that I have sat since my first in 1994 (quite possibly Standard Grade English - it always seemed to be near the start, but it might not have been).

It would have been in the assembly room at School, with the corridor round it shut off (it was the quickest way from the Science block to the front of the school....). I was probably shitting a brick (I did that prior to most exams....)

I then went thru the rest of my Standard Grades, Highers and Certificate of Sixth Year Studies largely without a problem - although I do remember my pen running out in one, and having a nose bleed and a migrane in another....

I then went to Uni - and the exams there were in the games hall - I figure there would have been about 300+ in there (all doing different exams). They were scary.... The funniest tho was the time someones mobile went off - it was in their bag at the front (they were all just piled up). The lecturers/invilgilators ignored it the first 2 times, but on the 3rd they went on a hunt thru the bags - it was really quite funny!

All I can say is I'm so glad I don't have any more to sit (I *think* I'm well on my way to the 150 mark in terms of individual exams over the years.... :S)

#95306Mon 19/05/08 18:37

Nothing from GCSEs but I remember in uni a girl from our class deciding to take a nap in the middle of the exam. I don't think the invigilators could quite believe it.

I don't recall them being that terrible, but I'm glad I don't have any more to do (in the foreseeable future).

#29884Mon 19/05/08 18:38

We had to sit in preassigned seats. I'd always end up either with the desk that made a noise every time I made a pen stroke or I'd end up catching a cold and would be sat there all snotty for a few hours.

In my English Literature GCSE we'd all sat down and had the papers on our desk and were told to begin. We all opened the papers to find questions from books we'd not studied. The exam board had sent the wrong papers. So we all had to wait for a few hours for them to fax over the proper ones to be photocopied. And during this waiting we had to be kept in an almost quarantine like state so that we couldn't contact pupils from other schools who would have had the real questions.

Drama was the best GCSE in the world. 20 hours off timetable to run around and improvise stuff with an A* at the end of it.

#95306Mon 19/05/08 18:39

We had to sit in preassigned seats.

Heh, another uni story, we also had preassigned seats, but some guy was sat in mine. I've never been in a situation where I had to try and be as non-aggressive as possible whilst saying "You're in my seat."

#29884Mon 19/05/08 18:48

Oooh, another one is from something my Drama teacher told me. She told us all one lesson that invigilating exams is one of the most boring tasks any teacher can do - so the teachers doing it think up little games to play.

There's the "Who-can-get-the-spare-sheets-of-paper-to-the-person-with-their-hands-up-quickest" game which was rather onbvious once we knew it was going on.

Then there was the "Stand-next-to-the-pupil-most-likely-to..." game where'd they all agree to go stand next to, say, the student most likely to fail. Or ask to go to the toilet. Or fail at life, the universe and everything.

After that I became paranoid any time anyone stood near me during an exam.

#77791Mon 19/05/08 18:48

I remember at school doing my written o level french. We were in the sports hall and at the same time there was A level english lit going on.

The A levellers opened their papers to discover that they had been taught the entire wrong syllabus. It was back in the days of no course work and 100% exam. Nearly everyone had uni places riding on it and some were even oxbridge.

It caused a real outcry and the local newspaper was at school. To us 16 year olds at the time it was a nice distraction from our french paper!