Three hours of distress

All of us must have given an exam at some point in our lives. EXAMINATIONS have always been the most dreaded word for a student since time immemorial. I remember how much I used to crib over them and detest my teacher who would be roving around me giving a reminder of every second ticking. My heart knows how much I envied her. But the tables have turned today. And alas! The grass did not turn out to be greener at this side of the fence.

My stint as a school teacher has one thing that brings the hell out of me. It is the scare of a three hours long exam duty. Believe me, it is the worst job in the world where you do not do anything. Take unaccountable rounds of the room, try to be as vigilant as possible, endless rounds of distributing sheets and counting every minute on the clock. Three hours of unimaginable torture and boredom. Surviving this time is an atrocious task.

Three hours is a long time. Think about the number of things you can actually do in this span. You can complete a movie in 3 hours. You can listen to 36 songs. You can read 5 magazines or complete the Alchemist. You can surf, chat or reconnect with your friends. One can reach Mumbai from Delhi in three hours and even a T20 match ends in this time. But what do we do? Nothing. Roam around like an idiot without sitting for a moment, try hard to keep focussing on your target or else find something interesting to kill time.

Here it is very remarkable to know what other teachers do in their slotted three hours of agony. We actually have the honour of having the most versatile teachers in our school. So I decided to watch them furtively, trying to interpret their state of mind. Believe me, my observations were mind blowing. I noticed that some fellow colleagues consider this examination duty a golden chance of scoring some bonus points for themselves in the school. You must be wondering how? Well they have a clear cut agenda here which is to catch a student cheating. The higher the number of student one catches, the higher the incentives one gets in terms of being termed a more dedicated teacher. Some of them have a funda which goes like – chill during the session, don’t bother much on the academics, go slow with the syllabus but be extra vigilant during the exam. Catch hold of your 2-3 preys and enjoy the tag of being the most diligent teacher for the rest of the session. Amazing people and their incredible beliefs.

It is notable here that if you happen to have the company of a fellow colleague during your invigilation duty, life seems to be on a roller coaster ride. Not because it relieves your work, but actually for another reason. Ask me why? I might sound very sadist here but I love to see a feeling of comparative misery in the eyes of my colleagues.

I recently had this experience of giving an exam again. And believe me, it was not as dreaded this time as it used to be earlier. I was ecstatic on having the luxury of sitting in an exam for full three hours and derived pleasure from the suffering of the invigilator. I had a hard time to complete my allotted time in the exam as I hardly knew anything but still, I made it a point that I was not going to leave the exam hall before the stipulated 3 hours. Somehow my masochistic drive did not allow me to grant him the liberation of shortening his allotted hours of distress. I sat their solely because of the sake of the invigilator. He had to live through his 3 hours of hell.

Ask my heart, giving an invigilation duty is the worst torment in the world and can well be deployed as one of the persecution techniques in prison cells. Rather than putting a culprit to prison send him for an exam duty instead. I bet, he will never be an offender again. It is my fate that this kind of harassment continues and will continue to be legal in India till the time I choose to be in this profession. So the next time you go for an exam, have some clemency for the one standing on the other side of the desk. One poor creature known as the examiner.