A.S. (I think I made this up, but I'm hoping it's ante script [before text]...) Advance warning but this is yet another post on exams. I promise it's the last one for this year and that I'll get back to writing semi-regularly! Damned exams...
So, you know how in an exam you're in absolute silence or else. No scraping your chair, no excessively noisy page turning or pen scratching, no kicking the metal table legs (which is a bad idea anyway, considering how unstable our exam tables are). Even drinking water too loudly gets you a stern glare from the invigilators. So it goes without saying that actually talking and communicating with someone is the exam equivilant of a mortal sin. The only thing that would get you in more trouble would be a phone, smuggling in notes elaborately tattooed on your hand or running around the exam hall shouting like a lunatic.
The only problem is, I do talk quite a lot (Oh really? You hadn't guessed this from all the rambling posts?). I talk to myself for one thing. Especially when in a stressful situation when I have absolutely no idea, no clues and no answers (e.g the exam hall). It does take some thinking for me so I don't end up blurting out the answers for all the candidates to hear which is bad for obvious reasons. But what is worse is those things I say, directed to others, without thinking.
I always say 'Bless you' to people who I hear sneeze (I can even say it in German!). If you're in an exam room, during spring/summer when all the pollen is out and about, and there is quite a few other people with you, probablity is, someone is at some point going to sneeze. If I'm lucky, I'm too busy working (or staring at the question in despair) to notice. But if I notice, I instictively try to say 'Bless you' before my brain panics and cuts my voice out, realising its mistake.
At least though, if you say 'Bless you', the invigilator is unlikely to think that you are communicating the answer to a question. I mean, really, can you imagine that? 'Okay, if you sneeze the question number in this maths paper, the number of seconds' delay in my response is the nuumerical answer'. Yeah. Not a great system. They do get a little more touchy however if you actually turn around to the person behind you and say something... I was sat in front of someone and managed to kick them (even though they were behind me -.-) so without thinking, I half turned my head, whispered 'Sorry' and then had a minor heart attack when I realised that what I consider politeness, the examiner might consider cheating! Not a good feeling. After the exam, I apologised again to the person, who said they were going to say 'It's okay' back!
The panic of possibly being disqualified was maybe excessive (the examiners have hearts too, right?) but I still had that moment of 'Why did you do that?!'. Basically, I just need to shut up more especially in exams. And stop trying to be polite, especially in exams...
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