In Which I Revoke My Own Poetic License

Final Exams are over. The less said about work these days the better….

Anyway. Monitoring students while they take an exam can get pretty boring. I stand in the back of the room most of the time. I look over their shoulders. I walk around the room. I answer questions. Usually the answer is either, “Read the instructions,” or “Read it carefuly and choose the best answer….” If I had a nickel for every time I — wait. My salary is depressing enough. (I deliver these answers as clearly, concisely, and calmly as I can muster because mostly I desperately want to say, “goddammitreadthefuckinginstructionsyouidiot!” or “Ispentthelasttenmonthstellingyoutheanswersnowyoutellmethat’swhythisiscalledaTESTyouidiot!”)

I do not sit at my desk while the students are working on the test. I’m sure that some teachers sit at their desks and grade the previous period’s exams. I have done that before too. After all, students have two hours to take the test and we have an average of about three minutes each to grade them. (That’s time we get paid for. Most of us work many hours we don’t get paid for.) Pedagogically, it’s poor practice not to be vigilant during an exam. But so is having impossible deadlines imposed on us.

So. Yesterday. I was giving an exam. My mind wandered a bit. And if there was any stimulus that prompted this, I don’t recall it. Suddenly I had in mind “The Youth Fairy”. (My brain, as has been repeatedly demonstrated, has a mind of its own.)

There’s a poem or short story in there somewhere about youth being taken from us in our sleep without so much as a dime left under our pillows. And I jotted a few notes on some scrap paper. While I still think there is some potential there, I don’t think I’ll ever follow up on it. So. You wanna run with this one?