Testing Times

Before I start, I want all you warriors who braved the Unit Tests last week to give yourself a pat on the back. And if you didn’t brave them? Well, give yourself one anyway because you need it.

The July UTs of Greenwood High were colorful to say the least. They are the first tests of the school year to have taken place online. And they have left quite the mark, to say simply. Not marks marks of course. I don’t have a lot of hopes on those, and many second thoughts. But they still left an unerasable legacy.

This week, we asked the students of Greenwood High what they thought about the tests and the school was united on one front. I cannot sugarcoat this in anyway so let me say outright: they were pretty bad. Let’s have a moment of silence for all the papers we ruined.

And this time it wasn’t even entirely our fault.

Even before the UTs I had nightmares about anything and everything that could go wrong in the paper. I was sure I was invoking Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. You can study all you want, but what’s the point if your power bails on you in the middle of the paper? Or if your service provider decides to throw a fit? Or if you never made it to the end of the paper because you were squinting and reading your paper during writing time?

Prepping for the exams was a task in and of itself. How am I supposed to find a room in my house which is completely devoid of any personality because I will be judged for it a couple of days later? I solemnly took down my entire wall of posters because BTS Jimin might just whisper math formulas to me during the papers. Let’s not forget the tables. For the exam, your laptop has to be across the Red Sea so the invigilator can see what sneaky things your hands are up to.

Don’t forget to tour your workspace with the teacher just like a cheap vlogger before you sit down to write!

Everyone has their horror stories about UTs. Every single aspect of the paper managed to strike the fight or flight response in the students. Starting from the paltry 1 hour 30 minutes and NO reading time given to ISC students accustomed to over 2 hours for every paper, to the ravenous portions which consumed every waking hour for revision, and the frenzy of clicking pictures of your work for the last 20 minutes and praying to any higher power that’s listening that they are legible. And of course, how can I leave out the lockouts.

I have been locked out of my exams for a whopping 22 times throughout 6 papers. And I didn’t even have any technical issues! The beloved ‘exam.net’ informed me that “the exam area has lost focus”, but to date, I have no clue as to what I did wrong.

Oh, the lock outs are brutal. What if your Teams app crashes? Obviously, you go and restart it right? And for that you have to leave the exam page. What happens when you leave the exam page? You get locked out! Now, students are stuck in a festering feedback loop where they can’t fix their problem without unlocking a whole slew of new ones. This was well thought out!

Well, at least I made it to the end of my paper, and just had to submit my sheets. Others weren’t so lucky. Technical issues ravaged so many poor students’ exams, while they stood helpless to stop it all. Wi-Fi just gave up in the middle of papers leaving them stranded, with no way to contact anyone and do something about it, and when they do get back into the ever-present Teams call, the code to let them back in takes what seems like a century to arrive, and sometimes it doesn’t even work the way it’s supposed to. By the time things settle, so much time has been wasted that their paper is beyond saving.

By the third day, everyone realized the magnitude of the timing issue. This wasn’t one or two students unable to finish the paper. It’s entire classes and grades struggling against the timer. So, the ten-minute reading time was introduced. That reading time, however insignificant it looks on the larger scale, was a saving grace. Papers went marginally better after it was introduced. Still, time was tight, and nothing can make me go back to the sheer anxiety of watching the timer tick down as I feverishly wrote page after page. God forbid you miscalculate the time left because exam.net is sneaky, it has the time you have for uploading added onto the actual writing time. Beware, if you think you have 30 minutes left, you might just have ten to finish up.

Of course, during exams, you can’t get up for whatever reason. Alarm bells start ringing if you as much slip out of frame. You are being watched by Big Brother from a metallic box that sits making strange noises throughout the exam because some poor kid on the other side is writing their exam next to a construction site and both of you aren’t spared from the din.

I had no problem with not getting up from my seat during the exams until the computer paper when it started raining inside my room. Oh no, I’m not dumb I closed the windows, of course I knew it was going to rain. No, my ceiling leaked. In the middle of the exam. So along with all the static noise from the other side, I had to listen to a veritable waterfall inside my own room and pray nothing is damaged in the room as I continued to draw logic gate diagrams.

This brings us to the climax of every exam: uploading time. Scan the code, click the picture, upload! Sounds easy enough, right? WRONG! I thought my pictures were pretty up to par when I clicked submit because, come on, we, generation z high schoolers have been relying on photographed notes since the dawn of WhatsApp. When we returned to classes after tests, we were met with avalanches of complaints about our poor photography skills.

As I’m reaching the ending of the article, I’m looking for a way to put a positive spin on these tests, but nothing lights up. Forgive me, but I see no redeemable way to put last week’s events. To put it in the words of the young people, “It sucked completely.” I remember thinking after every paper, "Well Minal, forget about college now.” And yes, to all seniors reading this, I feel your pain, we can all drop out together. To all the other grades, I’m sorry you have more of this.

Now, the only bright thing about this is that it is over. It’s behind us. Let’s leave it behind. Until of course, Round 2: Term Exams.

Are any of you praying for a zero year yet?