Examinations
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
At many stages during a human's development he or she will be expected to take things called 'examinations'. These are unpleasant experiences where a room is filled with the victims, or 'candidates', and they are given a few hours to answer a mind-boggling array of perverse questions.
They range from GSCE's, taken by poor young milk-sops, to university level exams, taken by the academic and thus hopelessly distanced from real-life. One thing they do all have in common, however, is that in the run-up to the exams the subject they cover is expounded by someone who knows a lot about the topic but is strangely reluctant to pass this knowledge on. It is traditional to sit several over a period of a few weeks, to concentrate the misery.
There are other traditional aspects to this primitive ritual. The examination hall should be crowded, hot and humid, with a clock at the extreme front so only those in the first three rows can see what the time is. Noisy and ineffective air-conditioning is a bonus. The chairs should be uncomfortable and the desk wobbly and too small, while the complicated exam instructions should be whispered by the chief invigilator at the start of the exam.
When the answer booklets are finished, they should be sent to complete strangers who will smoke dope and assign marks on a purely random basis.
In many ways, the exam could be seen as a metaphor for human existence; it's technically quite long but only seems to last a few minutes, no-one really knows what they're doing so everyone bluffs, there's never enough time to do everything you should and after the event people you don't know will assign a value to it.
They range from GSCE's, taken by poor young milk-sops, to university level exams, taken by the academic and thus hopelessly distanced from real-life. One thing they do all have in common, however, is that in the run-up to the exams the subject they cover is expounded by someone who knows a lot about the topic but is strangely reluctant to pass this knowledge on. It is traditional to sit several over a period of a few weeks, to concentrate the misery.
There are other traditional aspects to this primitive ritual. The examination hall should be crowded, hot and humid, with a clock at the extreme front so only those in the first three rows can see what the time is. Noisy and ineffective air-conditioning is a bonus. The chairs should be uncomfortable and the desk wobbly and too small, while the complicated exam instructions should be whispered by the chief invigilator at the start of the exam.
When the answer booklets are finished, they should be sent to complete strangers who will smoke dope and assign marks on a purely random basis.
In many ways, the exam could be seen as a metaphor for human existence; it's technically quite long but only seems to last a few minutes, no-one really knows what they're doing so everyone bluffs, there's never enough time to do everything you should and after the event people you don't know will assign a value to it.
