Ghosts and empty sockets

I don't usually proctor my quizzes. I ask my TA and undergrad assistants to do it, and apart from a quick visit to the room about fifteen minutes into the exam, I make myself scarce. Today a concatenation of circumstances resulted in the TA having to scoot out early, so I stepped in for the last 45 minutes. I realized it was the first time I was proctoring something for myself.

One of the first things that crossed my mind as I stood by the side wall of the auditorium surveying a hundred bowed heads was the sudden realization that this was ALL. DUE. TO. ME. It was a sudden surge-burst feeling of huge POWER -- all at once I was seized with the urge to break out into thunderous laughter HEE HEE HA HA HA HA, or play the 3/1/69 Dark Star loudly over the PA all at once. For a lark -- just to see them jump.

Slowly that feeling faded. (It was good while it lasted, but I dared not toy with the idea *too* hard.) I took to walking slowly round the auditorium, keeping randomly away from the paths traced being by the undergrad assistant. On one of my first circuits, as I reached the front of the room, I noticed this woman sitting in the second row.

She was asleep.

I found it funny for about a second, then my professional side kicked in and I wondered -- should I go wake her up? I'd designed this quiz to be tight on time, so every minute spent napping would hurt the kid. I felt sympathetic -- maybe she'd been up studying all night (because of ME), and now all that effort would go to waste. Poor thing. On the other hand, I thought waking her up might be unfair to the other kids -- those who had prepared themselves physically as well as from a course material point of view, and deserved the advantage they'd worked for. Plus I wouldn't want to wake the girl and embarrass her publicly. Maybe she was done, anyway, and *wanted* to sleep. Who knew?

So I stood there and looked at her.

Eventually the assistant wandered round. As she approached I signalled to her to join me at the front, and then I pointed out the sleeper. Her first reaction was to cover her mouth to suppress the giggle. (The grin stayed fixed on her face for quite a long while, even after our brief conversation.) A kid in the front row heard the giggle and looked up and smiled knowingly at me. I smiled knowingly back at him. I knew he didn't know what was funny.

I asked the assistant whether she'd ever seen other instances of people falling asleep during quizzes. She said she had (but kept grinning anyway). Somehow, that reassured me -- I'm not sure why. Then I asked her whether she thought one of us should go wake the kid up. She said no, pretty emphatically -- for one of the reasons I'd listed above, I guessed. So I decided to let the sleeping kid lie. I wandered off on another circuit of the auditorium. The assistant stood fixed to the front, eyes locked, hand barely covering grin. Eventually, something else drew her attention and she drifted off. The next time I went round, the kid in the front row had woken up and was staring into space. Then she looked down at her paper. Other kids started raising their hands indicating they'd finished, so my attention got diverted.

But I haven't told you the punchline yet. The sleeper - a quiet, nondescript, backbencher sort - had been wearing a black zippered sweatshirt with a stealie on the back. That stealie was one of the first things that had caught my eye as I'd stepped into the auditorium. It's the first stealie I've seen in Hong Kong, outside of my own possessions. It was probably the reason 3/1/69 came to mind in the first place. As the quiz ended, I made it a point to walk up to the kid to take her answer sheet. She noticed I was about to say something and averted her eyes instantly. Even before I spoke, she blushed.

"I love your jacket," I said.

"Oh really?!" Total shock.

"Ya it's my favorite band."

As I'd expected, she had no idea what I was talking about. She was just glad to be off the hook -- she could go home and hope then pretend that no one - least of all, I - had seen her sleep in the middle of her blah quiz.

And I went home and wondered whether I should have woken her up and forced her to keep working, because that's what I'm supposed to do -- not stand around giving angles about obscure cultural emblems.

******

My MBA training proclaims that every problem is an opportunity. Great sound-byte for class. My PhD experience observes that every opportunity brings along a dozen freaking problems.