Siting all alone in an otherwise empty classroom (this was a Secondary Mod, where nobody took academic 'A' Levels), I opened up the question paper when the adjudicating teacher said I could do so and began reading the contents of the first page...
Then I turned over and read the questions on the other side...
Hmmmm....
I turned back and read all the questions again...
Yep, I was right: I didn't know the answer to any of them!
So I answered half of one question on the industrial economy of the Rhur, a third of another one on South American Rain Forests and finally managed a not very long paragraph on winds in which I described the jolly faces on Ptolemy's Geographia...
All of which explains why - whilst laughing - my heart goes out to the following hapless exam students who bravely (if unwisely) demonstrated that they knew what they didn't know!
Click on images to enlarge
6 comments:
I wished I had had had the guts or the understanding of the world to mess about on my exam paper twenty five years ago. Instead, I followed the common herd and just got it all conventionally wrong. Now I work for the council - a salutory lesson in where conforming gets you :-(
I wonder what all these creative geniuses are up to now!
I scribbled an "answer back" in my exercise book when I was about 10. I can't remember the question, but I just wrote - hard - "do it yourself" and handed in my exercise book later, having forgotten all about it! Ohhhhhhhh the shame!
BOLL WEAVIL - Those responsible for the examples given will probably all became local Councillors!
SUZANNE - Ouch! I'm blushing for you...
Oh, memories of exams. I remember all the calculus - which I look at now and cannot understand one jot of. Would it work for the Green Lantern, I wonder?
Wouldn't it have been great to go with the solution to "find x"? That's just brilliant. And the one where the equation goes to hell and the guy hangs himself. Of course it would have meant a good caning from the Head.
The only thing I know from my exams is that I don't have to do anything like that again.
GOOD DOG - Well, you know I don't think exams ever really finish: someone's always examining us about something --- even if it doesn't involve graph-paper!
Exams are okay if you know your subject well enough - but I still get nightmares about them - funnily enough I had one just last night and that was before I'd read this Blog. Do you think we are both psychic, Brian?
My most vivid exam memory was sitting a university exam with a couple of distractions either side of me.
To my right was a very mature student who had a problem and smelt strongly of meths and on the left was a young Malasian lad who had placed a large alarm clock on his desk. At the end of the second hand was a chicken's head, which kept going round the clock.
I actually managed to pass the exam.
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