Three weeks ago I went to a very important exam. The room that was reserved for it wasn't the one typically used for regular class, it was about three times as big. I go sit in the back row.
We were given two hours to complete the exam. First, we had to write a draft, and then write the final copy on another sheet with ink.
I'm done with the draft very quickly. I think that, if I complete the final copy and go hand it out so early, it'll look a bit odd. So, I lazily review the final copy and think of random stuff for a while.
The week before the exam, the teacher formally says that she'll update the remaining time clearly on the blackboard when there'd be 1 hour remaining, 30 minutes remaining, and finally 15 minutes remaining.
All this time I periodically examine the blackboard and nothing was shown at all. I don't usually carry watches because when I bear one I check it out all the time and it stresses me out. I had a PSP in my backpack, but I didn't open it to check out the internal clock since I thought it might be perceived as an attempt to use a computer (they're forbidden for exams).
The teacher steps up and says that the two hours are up. I'm pretty shocked, so I go in the front and noticed that she did update the time, but with numbers so ridiculously small that no one but those sitting at the very first row could notice that something was inscribed on the board. Fortuitously I was the one student in the room who relied on that and who got screwed.
This seems pretty disastrous because I only transcribed roughly 45% of the final copy. I go on front and tell her about this, and she admits to having messed up, but says that ultimately, out of fairness for the other students, there's nothing to do about it.
Over the two following weeks I'm a bit worried, since passing this course is mandatory to be allowed to attend two courses out of the five ones that will come in the upcoming winter 2008 session. That exam accounted for 30% of the final grade. Previously to that we'd made a bit of homework, and my grades hadn't been as high as hoped. In this course you need to become very familiar with certain standards of the french language in modern society, and it's very hard for someone like me who hasn't seriously read or written french for years to compete with a ton of people freshly out of college who aren't out of the loop and who have been intimately familiar with these standards for years.
So in the end, the incident definitely made me risk to fail the course completely.
Then last week, she finally says in front of the class that exceptionally, since it was our first exam, she decided to correct the draft if a student hadn't had time to transcribe it to the final copy. Phfew.
When she hands my copy over, she congratulates me because the grade is immensely improved over the past ones, even if the correction was based on a rough draft. It's one of the best ones in the whole class.
Now the final exam for that course is today in about 8 hours. So yeah, I do have a watch attached to my left wrist now, and I'm about to go to bed. And no super scary nightmarish stuff will happen this time.
