Moulding the Young Minds of the Future Generations

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, one of THE most boring parts of my job as a marketing and business lecturer, is having to invigilate exams. Yes I get a lot of steps on my pedometer, but I would prefer to be lecturing. One of the most fascinating things about exams though, is how students react to them. First they are panicked and then they turn to their “good luck” charms and paraphernalia. I have dedicated a blog post to this in the past called Testing testing 1-2-3 which goes into how I have kept myself amused during exam times and a few more posts relating to things my students have said and done.You can find them here: Pearls of Wisdom, We Digress….. and We Don’t Need No Education if you haven’t seen them yet.

But as I embark on my 5th year of lecturing, I have decided to document some memorable moments that I have encountered during the dreaded invigilating as well as exam answers. Please show these to your children and explain why spelling is so important!!!

I don’t have photographic proof for them all, but these actually did happen:

Answer 1
White people can’t dance and keep rhythm. [yes 1 mark, because some white people can dance]
This stereotype is usually promoted by black people because ALL black people are born with a NATURAL rhythm for music and white people aren’t. [and there you go losing this mark and the previous one]

Answer 2 (same student)
Rugby supporters are aggressive.
It will be very dumb to walk in Pretoria and tell a group of Blue Bull supporters that the Bulls team are a bunch of gay queens [um, well yes that would make most sport supporter aggressive, but how do I mark this?]

50% chance of getting this answer right, but hey, let’s just leave it out because I’m not sure.

Seriously??  No we do not have negative marking.

*****

Within the first 30 minutes of a final exam, a student called me over to discuss how the allocated marks for each question did not total the 100 marks as indicated. Good thing she wasn’t doing a maths exam because sure enough, when all added together, they did in fact equal 100. Nothing like using your allocated writing time wisely!

*****

 

At the varsity where I lecture, it is customary, to put up the times in half hour increments, on the board so that students are able to immediately check how long they have left to finish the exam. Students may not have their cell phones with them during the exam, so this assists students who use their phones as a time-piece. I kid you not when I tell you that a student called me over to the back of the class to tell me that I should wipe the next time off the board. When I checked the time, I still had 1 minute before the time was up! (sigh)

 

*****

 

 

A student wrote me a note on the exam paper. It simply read “this is hard.” lol sorry.

 

 

*****

Then I get other notes:

Why do I need to know this??

*****

Another student left a blank space for a specific question. If that wasn’t enough to let me know that he didn’t know the answer, he then added into the blank space “sorry I didn’t think we’d be tested on this.”  Yes, I understood that you didn’t know the answer, when you left a HUGE BLANK SPACE. Thanks for confirming that you spotted for the exam!!

 

*****

Sunlight Dish washing Liquid – “the major benefit of Sunlight is the many flavours”  I am not sure who is eating / drinking Sunlight Dish washing liquid that the taste would make an impact to increase purchase?

 

*****

Sucking up:

 

My all-time favourite “below the belt” and spelling errors:

 

How did we get to an example of tampons on a VAT question? Oh yes, apparently they are an essential item alongside bread!

Took me a while to realise he meant Coke!

 

I must admit I have no experience of the Israeli vibrator market

 

The last 3 lines are an example of a single mother!

Remuneration is important to your staff stuff members

 

Sleasy Slizzy Italians!

Beef pettis had me for a while…. ~ Ahhh beef PATTIES!

 Polite messages:

Yes I can see that you don’t know!

 

I’m not confused. If it states 4b then I mark it as 4b.

 

All students finished before the last 15 minutes

 

Don’t be sorry, write neater!!

Some make me smile:

Love the slang in this example and of course GODLY!

 

As you can see, lecturing is very interesting. My students keep me entertained and we have some really good laughs! These young people truly are the future, as Whitney Houston sang “I believe that children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way.” Here’s to another fun-filled year of teaching and learning.