Personal Log: Adrian Rodd

Ah, the many delights of organisation in French university bureaucracy...

This coming Wednesday, I mark oral exams, starting at 4pm. Students have half an hour to prepare a commentary on a text chosen by me, with a new student arriving every 15 minutes to start preparing in turn. We're two teachers, splitting the students between us. 4pm is a little late in the day to begin oral exams, but as long as there aren't many students, no problem...

There are 63.

If I've counted correctly, that means we'd be finishing at 1am.

Lovely. Let's just ignore the fact that the uni would be closed at 1am, and that there are no trains at that time for me to get home. I really don't feel like being at uni in the middle of the night trying prod tired students struggling to remember whatever they can about 17th century British government systems and changes...

Even more fun: all students have apparently been told to turn up at the same time, just before 4pm. I can imagine saying: "All right, well it's 3:50pm now. Just go and sit over there and wait for a little while; you can start at a quarter past midnight."

The uni has kindly told us not to worry too much: "A lot of them probably won't turn up anyway."

Oh, well that's ok, then... Scribbling "absent: fail" a dozen or more times on a bit of paper only takes a few minutes, after all.