Clare the Invigilator

How has that happened? Its November already and I’ve been here 5 months…

Last week was crazy but I suppose typical of the life I’m now having here. I invigilated an exam and was completely puzzled by the fact that for the first 5 minutes, nobody did anything except draw lines around the edges of their answer papers, framing them with slightly squiffy pencil marks. I’d brought lots of work to do, thinking that I’d have trouble sitting still for 3 hours but I was fascinated watching them scribbling away, sucking the ends of their biros and stealing quick, furtive glances at their friends to see what everyone else was doing.

I’d actually got their answer papers from the previous day’s exam to mark so I set about scribbling myself (I am taking great, but unexpected, pleasure in writing all over other people’s work with a red pen!) As I sat there, remembering to look up every now and then so that I looked like I knew what I was doing, I keep thinking how funny it is that I’m doing all these things and how surely someone will discover soon enough I’m winging it most of the time!