9 October 2017
I rise early. There are traffic jams to sit in. After sitting in them for an hour or so, I finally arrive at the exam centre in Brizzle, where the Lead Invigilator is already drumming his fingers on the table tops waiting for me. He is a magistrate, and although he looks friendly I am taking no chances. I smile sweetly and he hands me a packet of antibacterial surface wipes. Our first task, it seems, is to clean the candidates’ desks. We do not want them to be distracted by dust or coffee stains or desiccated spider carcasses. It is much better to have them intoxicated by antibacterial fumes and glued to their desks with residual solvent. The antibacterial surface wipes come from a box of Invigilators’ Goodies, which the PEB people have very kindly shipped on ahead for us. It is most exciting rummaging in the goodie box. Like Christmas come early. There is Blu-tak® and string, and parcel tape and scissors, and spare black pens for candidates who, though brainy enough to construct a freedom to operate opinion, cannot organise themselves to bring the right implement to record it. There is a clock as well, and a battery. Thanks to the separateness of said clock and said battery, it takes the Lead Invigilator and me some five minutes to get the clock going. This was not covered in our otherwise rigorous training. (Who knew that clocks needed batteries?? I thought time was something that moved on automatically. Except in CIPA Council meetings of course.) There follow several more Highly Important Jobs which only a properly trained PEB invigilator can do, and for which a Deputy Invigilator like me has to be closely supervised. These include: sticking laminated signs outside the exam hall saying “SSHHH! GO AWAY!! EXAMS UNDERGOING PROGRESS!!!”; sticking laminated signs inside the exam hall saying “Dear Candidates, These are the exam rules and if you break them you will be Punished by Ms Sear”; and undoing yet more boxes from the PEB, which turn out to be full of boring stuff like exam papers, and not really Christmassy at all. Then we put out candidate numbers and exam papers on the bacterially-purged desks. The papers are in tamper-proof party bags, so that no one can cheat and take a sneak preview beforehand, thus guaranteeing that the first five minutes of each exam has to be devoted to cutting, tearing, biting or scrabbling your way into the party bag and discarding bits of chewed-up plastic on the floor around your desk. This is a Security Measure. Our next task is to set up laptops for candidates who have been allowed to write their scripts using a Microsoft® Autocorrupt text processing system. The Lead Invigilator tells me it is my job to do this, because I am younger than him. To prove it, he says he can remember back to the days when computers were the size of washing machines. I refrain from replying that when you introduce a memory stick to a Windows® operating system, you might just as well have put it in the washing machine anyway. I boot up the laptops with trepidation, and spend the rest of the day terrified that they are going to embark on a software update midway through an exam. By now, the candidates are gathering at the doors. They look glum. We usher them in. “Surprise!” we say, “Look what the Exam Pixies have brought you!” They still look glum. I think they are an ungrateful crowd. The Lead Invigilator and I have put a lot of effort into making the room nice for them – not to mention antibacterial. Personally I believe candidates should be penalised if they do not properly enter into the spirit of the occasion. We watch them set out their pencil cases and picnics on their desks. Unlike invigilators, examinees are allowed to bring as much crunchy and squelchy and downright unsavoury-looking food as they like. Which seems unfair somehow. We check that they have not smuggled their phones in. We check that they have left their revision notes at the back of the room. We even check that they have not hidden copies of the Black Book behind the toilet cisterns. Then the Lead Invigilator reads out some special instructions about not cheating and not Morris dancing and what to do if you want to leave the room to cry in the corridor for a bit. It is like reading someone their last rites. Only the Lead Invigilator is allowed to do this job, because a Deputy Invigilator like me might add some facetious comments and compromise the gravity of the situation. That would not do at all. And then it is time to start. This morning’s exam is The One About UK Patent Law. I am comforted to see that many of the candidates calculate procedural deadlines by counting off the months on their fingers. I thought I was the only person who did this. I thought everyone else was too clever.
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