Hall monitor elite

Going from one week non-stop talking to kids in consults to talking with nobody while on hall monitor duty (and nobody after) is quite a shock to the system. Before: brain furiously active, improvising responses to difficult questions on the spot without skipping a beat. After: Almost total brain shut down, performing the highly essential task of making one's presence felt in the exam hall, while in reality merely functioning as a dispenser of paper and watching the digital clock counting life away. The idle mind is a philosophical mind.

Or keeping tabs on toilet breaks. It's amazing how popular the toilet is during a three-hour paper. There's a constant flow of kids (mostly boys, oddly enough) who need to "get up and go", more this year than in any other I've ever encountered. Guess we'll be instituting some kind of bladder training as an essential exam skill when word gets around.

Anyway, I may be a disgruntled hall monitor this year because I think the rotations could be more even. Yes, I'm sympathetic to the headache that comes with scheduling monitors with papers with venues, and it's a nightmare and all, but sticking one 'elite' group with all the big papers is a little too convenient and presumes that we don't notice -- and even if we did, we don't mind. As one of the 'elite', though I can't speak for the others, I will say for the record, I do and I do.

Two... more... weeks...!