Summertime....and the living is easy...

Bah. Humbug.

Summertime, when the children are all out of school, giving their parents and the day-care centres headaches, cannon-balling into pools all over the county, and generally being carefree while they forget everything they learned in school¹. I, on the other hand, manage to steal an hour a day for some swimming with the tykes, only to have to run back to the computer and work on tests.

Yes, tests. Not taking them, mind – taking them is easy – writing the blasted things.

For weeks now, yours truly has been chained to the laptop, morning and night, banging out hundreds of test questions with no end in sight. These objects have to be banked – that is, you have to write multiples, because the little beggars will cheat if you don't. And they have to be precisely worded, on topic, and varied, and labelled, according to difficulty. No fair making them all level 4 (hard) questions. No fair making them all level 1 (easy) questions. No. Gotta follow the educational people's guidelines. It's like rubbing your belly and patting your head for hours on end. Writing is fun (to me): Writing test questions is often about as much fun as shovelling coal². There might be a gold nugget or two in there, but my brain muscles start to ache after a while.

Oh, and you can't make up silly wrong answers. Which is why this is not one of my test questions:

How did Galileo reply to the charges of the ecclesiastical authorities?

• He apologised and promised to leave the solar system alone in future.
• He claimed that all the heresy in his book was the fault of a vindictive atheist subeditor.
• He sent the Pope a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, obtained by time machine.
• He spray-painted "eppur si muove" all over the Trevi Fountain and took off in a passing tardis.

I appreciate the importance of good tests. After all, you want to be able to prove you learned something during the semester. You want some bona fides. Besides, you need something to show prospective colleges. And it would be really frustrating if the test questions were so badly worded that you couldn't figure out what they were asking. Sort of like those awful quizzes that proliferate around the web:

Which forces catalyzed the invention of writing?

Puh-leeze. They'll be using "impact" as a verb in the next sentence...wait for it...yep. I refuse to allow anything to be "impacted" that doesn't have mass. This includes the government.

I take my amusement where I can find it, these days. My brain hurts, as someone clever once said. I am dreading the day when I wake up and am unable to converse without putting my statement in the form of a multiple-choice question – a sort of Double Jeopardy in computer-scored form.

Good morning, dear. What would you like to drink?

• Coffee.
• Earl Grey, hot.
• Some of that ginseng iced tea with honey.
• Water from the dog's bowl.

We have three choices for lunch, dear. Which would be likely to make you gag?

• Leftover tacos from last night, with congealed sour cream.
• A gluten-free pizza with cheese, tomatoes, and pineapple.
• One of those gluten-free energy bars that has no nuts or dairy stuff in it.
• All of the above.
• [NOTE TO TECH DEPT: Turn off computer randomisation for this item.]

What would you like to do this afternoon, dear?

• Try to force the dog outside for a walk in the heat.
• Shoot misbehaving cats with your new water pistol.
• Try to find a show on television that doesn't involve murder, mayhem, or Billy the Exterminator.
• Write some new test questions.

You get the idea.

My sufferings, however, are not in vain. Not only do I get paid for this – always a consideration – but I can rest assured that I am making the world safer for democracy, educational progress, and little puppy dogs. As Thomas Paine once said,

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

I'm not sure, but I think he went on to say something about how "tests, like hell, are not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the exam, the more glorious the top marks." Or something like that. Great test-taker, Thomas Paine, which is why he was such an Enlightenment hero.

I am also absolutely sure that all those school kids will return from their summer break, tanned, refreshed, and eager to learn. They will open their computers with breathless anticipation, hardly able to conceal their glee at yet another history quiz.

Gee, Mr Gheorgheni, they will say³, you make the greatest tests.

Aw, shucks. 'Twarn't nothin'.

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Dmitri Gheorgheni

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