Exame Time in the Tropics

Jul 22, 2016 | Welcome Column

It’s exam time in the Cayman Islands at the moment. Which is another way of saying I am tired and my students are stressed.

There’s an odd sort of feeling on campus at this time of the year. Everyone is a bit punch drunk from a long and busy semester. Everyone, students and faculty alike, are worried about how the exams will go. And most importantly, everyone is looking forward to going on vacation next week. I mean, really looking forward to it. Sometimes I bump into the walls because I’m so looking forward to it that all I can see in front of me is my soon-to-be vacation. It’s a problem. My nose hurts.

Some of the students are better at coping with end of semester stress than others, although everyone I teach seems to be coping a bit better than average this time around. I can tell they’re coping because I’ve only had 3 students sitting in my office in tears while they talk to me this week. It’s not fun being the bad guy in somebody else’s dream-career-gets-destroyed scenario, but I try not to let that get to me. I’m a pretty hard grader and I make no apologies for it: today’s students are tomorrow’s doctors, so grade hard and save a life.

Some of the students are better at helping their classmates out than others too, and it’s quite sweet to see them doing what they can to help their friends cope.  Lately whenever I walk into a classroom there’s always some little motivational saying that has been written on the white board. I usually feel quite mean when I have to erase their motivation to use the board. (That thought is probably some terribly cynical allegory for academic life involving the fact that my job is  to wipe out their hopes and dreams and replace them with cold hard facts, but it depresses me too much to look into it so we’ll pretend it isn’t there.) Only a cold-hearted professor could fail to be moved by sayings such as “You can do it if you believe you can”; “Remember you’re studying to be a vet, that goal is worth this pain”; “Eat, sleep and study, but the first two are optional” written somewhere on the board; usually with a cute little cartoon of a dog or a flower and a paw print as decoration. Or, most sadly today, the board told me to “Hang in there, only 7 days of hell to go”. I didn’t feel too bad wiping that one off and replacing it with a list of drugs that must be memorized by Tuesday.

So next week I’ll give my two finals, grade them, pack up all of the assignments and midterms we’ve all put our blood sweat and tears into, play fiddle at the ceremony for the graduating class, send the dean my (hopefully) fair and objective judgments on a lot of young people’s capacity to save lives and then bugger of to Vacation Land. Most of those people will be happy, or at least content, with my judgments on their abilities, but a few will be devastated by them. Although it’s obviously not as personal for me as it is for my students, I do still suffer through finals right along beside them. I am always so happy when I get to give an A or an A+ (which is rare- hard grader remember), but it absolutely does not make up for the horrible feeling when I have to send out a failing grade. Every semester there are always a few students teetering on the brink of failure, and this semester is no different to usual, which means next week’s finals will be make or break for some of them. They don’t believe me when I tell them, but I will be nearly as nervous as they are while I watch them take their exams. I usually feel nauseous and have to take antacids to get through it. Between those and the pain killers for my sore nose things are getting complicated. Vacation Land I really need you!

All of which explains why I’ve been thinking lately about some of the exams I have done in my life. Between high school, vet school, vet board registration and postgraduate training there have been quite a lot of them. Most were a depressingly long time ago it’s true, but my memory hasn’t yet completely abandoned me in my old age and I do still remember the anxiety I used to feel standing outside waiting to go in to an exam. And I remember the anxiety waiting for grades to be posted too. (Note: ‘[pohsted]’-an archaic term describing the way in which grades were written on little pieces of paper, put into an envelope and delivered to one’s house by a stranger in a blue uniform  i.e. nothing at all to do with pressing buttons on a computer keyboard thus causing grades to appear on a student’s electronic blackboard.)

There was always doubt in my mind about what the result would be. Had I organized my partying and student life to the right degree or did I get it wrong? Failing was bad because it meant I had to explain to my parents what went wrong, and there are really only so many times you can trot out the line “I tried my hardest but I just don’t think that subject is one of my best” before they start to wonder if you actually have a best. Although, to be honest, if I did really well in an exam I was usually almost as upset as if I failed, because that was an indication that I had wasted good partying time by accidentally studying too much. Ah, student days.

I used to think that only academics had it this hard. Sure, lots of people need to pass an initial course to get them the job they want, but then they’re done. Nobody else has to keep doing exams all the time, just to be able to get on with their career. “Not fair,” I would wail (and sometimes twitch) in the midst of a 3 a.m. cram session, barely held together by sugar and caffeine (lots of caffeine), “Why can’t I be an artist or a musician or someone who has it easy?”

Of course now I know how silly that was.

Now I realize that of all of the professions in the world, musicians are probably the one group who has to do more exams than academics. For them, every performance is an exam. Every time they go on stage they are being judged (hopefully fairly and objectively, but probably not) by the people they are playing for. Their hopes and dreams can easily be crushed by an unsympathetic judgment, whether from the audience or an actual contest judge of some sort. If the audience hates them they will feel every bit as devastated as my poor students do when they fail. Even if the audience loves them, and they ‘pass their exam’ with flying colors, they have the unenviable realization that there’s another exam (gig) tomorrow night, or next week, or soon. Someone told me once that “somewhere out there there’s a person with your dream job who hates going to work each day”. I laughed and thought they were an idiot when they told me that. Those guys have it made! Flexible hours, wear what you want, make money for doing fun stuff, no stress man. Who could possibly hate being a professional musician?! But now that I think about it, seems I might have laughed too soon.

And I assume that the teachers of these musicians feel as bad for their students who do poorly as I feel for mine. I can’t imagine how my fiddle teacher (also a professional musician herself, so double the woes) copes when she has multiple students competing at the same festival, or worse, competing with each other in the same competition. She must be a nervous wreck by the end of it. No wonder so many musicians stay up late all night jamming in a pizza and alcohol daze; it’s just the grown-up version of cramming all night on a sugar and caffeine high. (Note: I am most definitely not recommending you substitute cocaine for caffeine. One way or the other it probably won’t turn out well, although I do really like Columbian coffee…)

Perhaps that’s why I have nobly chosen to not add to the misery my teacher suffers during festivals. By never being good enough to enter a competition I am just saving her from the stresses involved with me entering a competition. Yes, that’s definitely why I’m not adding “musical exams” to the stressors in my life: I’m just saving my teacher from the emotional devastation that a round of competition fiddling from me would inevitably cause her.  Ah, what a great student I am. Turn the lights out when you’ve finished reading this please; it’s late and I have to go and find my fiddle. And the donuts. And some of that good Columbian stuff.

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