(In two parts so I can get in a little studying.)
This morning, I woke up early. I threw open all the windows to the streaming sun, did some yoga, made a three-egg omelette for breakfast, downed some vitamins and fresh coffee, and walked to school.
I went to the exam room early since I'm picky about where I sit. The nervous energy in the room and in the hallway was palpable. My heart beat a little faster, though that could have been the coffee. I closed my eyes and took some long, deep breaths.
Then exam nightmare lightning struck.
The two students in front of me were talking quietly when one of them asked the other, "Does this plug actually work? My screen seems a little dim!"
The other unplugged her power supply and plugged it back in. No change. The laptop was running off of battery power.
"Oh my God. This row doesn't have power." They moved immediately, luckily discovering the problem with ten minutes to spare and with desks remaining.
I took another deep, slow breath. I had almost sat at that desk when I came into the classroom, but I spontaneously chose a different one at the last moment. I checked my computer; my row had power.
I am a Mac/UNIX person. The exam software only runs on Windows, so the computer I was using was new to me, a used laptop I'd bought from a friend. I would not have noticed if it was running on the battery, and I hadn't thought to check. The battery life is only about an hour. It would have failed in the middle of the exam.
More breathing. Ten minutes to go. Then the student to my left called over one of the SofTest consultants. (As an indication of how bad this software is, or how bad Windows is, my school appears to hire consultants who are on call during exam days to debug failures.)
They conferred. Another consultant came in. There were now four minutes remaining. They pressed some secret key combinations and rebooted the machine. Nothing worked.
My poor neighbor was suffering through my only real exam nightmare. I don't trust Windows software not to fail. I can't handwrite after years of typing, so typing the exam was my only choice. That left an uncontrollable variable in the equation: Windows and an unknown piece of software.
Two minutes left. There was some whispering. The consultants shook their heads. They reached a decision. Calling over the proctors, the hapless student was handed bluebooks. He would have to handwrite his exam.
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4 comments:
Yikes. I'd freak. There is no way I would be able to do a handwritten exam, not after years and years of typing. My hand about fell off when we took our intro exam, and that was only an hour.
Luck to you for the rest. :)
OMG, don't tell me...
Hey Transmogriflaw,
I think I go to your school (though a 2L), and for a while, I've worked in computer support, and I'm pretty sure all the people you see are just the normal computer support staff. There's not many, but really they're aren't many students who need help. And Examsoft does work quite well...at least in my perspective. From what I've heard pre-examsoft, you had to delete everything off your computer if you wanted to take a computer exam.
Hey, gov98, thanks, that's interesting. I had never seen any of these folks before, and I have been up to talk with the IT folks a few time, which is why I thought they were consultants. I had no idea we had so many people on our IT staff.
Two people did have their computers crash during my crim law exam, and I'm a lot calmer about it now that I've seen it happen. They called over the proctors, restarted, and were given the time back.
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