On The Proctoring Point of View

I write a lot about how much it blows to be an adult. There are so many responsibilities, there’s so much stress, there are so many things that you used to be able to eat but now they give you a tummy ache! It can be easy to romanticize the days of youth when life was simple and all you needed to have fun was a stick and a hoop. Well, I’ve come face to face with a situation that brought me back to reality…and the reality is that being a kid sucks too!

So, for the past two weeks, I’ve been proctoring AP exams for high school kids. If you don’t remember, APs are advanced placement exams that if you score well on, can get you college credit or allow you to skip a class or two…and they’re fucking stressful, man! Most of these days, I arrive at school at 7:30 am, get my materials and get everything set up. When the kids come into the classroom sometime around 8, they’re usually chattering about how little sleep they got, how much they’ve crammed for this exam, or how nervous they are. Every kid is sure that they’ll get a 2 on that day’s AP (it’s a 1-5 scale with passing being a 3 or above).

Then, these poor kids gotta sit there for anywhere between an hour and a half and 3+ hours! They’re writing up a storm with number two pencils, they’re typing up a tornado on their TI-84 calculators and they’re positively vibrating with a mixture of caffeine and anxiety. Meanwhile, I’m sitting behind a desk looking at memes and occasionally walking around the room.

When I’m on my authoritative excursions, checking for straying eyes or prohibited electronic devices, I can’t help but shiver when looking at the exam material! Calculus problems that I can’t even fathom how to read, physics equations that make my head spin, chemistry answers that look more like the writings of a serial killer’s cipher than anything within my brain’s ability to comprehend. It’s enough to give a guy nightmares of showing up to class and realizing you’re 20 minutes late…and you haven’t done your homework in 15 years, and also you’re not wearing any pants.

And then, the next day, these kids show up again to take another AP on world history or the US government or English (which, I mean, encompasses like a billion different books!). I know I complain a lot about being grown up but these past two weeks have really made me appreciate the fact that I haven’t had to fill in a bubble on a standardized test in like 10 years, that I haven’t had to write an essay on lined paper with a number 2 pencil in ages, that even though work can suck at least nobody makes me do math when they KNOW I’m terrible at it.

I guess all this just goes to show you that the grass is always greener on the other side, but the math is also much harder on the other side, so enjoy the fact that being an adult means no more AP exams!