Jamie has today off from Exam Supervision so has driven down to Hobart to spend the night with Nera. Marilyn and I were both rostered on in the afternoon.
One of the co-ordinators tries hard to keep up our spirits by getting us to respond to odd questions she writes on the board: what is your favourite car, and so on. Today we were asked where we would choose to live if we couldn’t live in Australia. Our immediate response was New Zealand but, on reflection, I changed my answer to Japan. New Zealand was my ‘head’ answer but Japan was from the heart.
Our exam was Psychology and we were in different rooms. I suspect that it’s a policy to make sure we focus on the task at hand. I was with an older woman who had been regaling the staffroom with her ideas on mobile phones – she refuses to carry one on principle because she hates to see young people chatting on them as they walk along. I tried to get her to take the lead in the supervision but she is an old hand and knows how to find the easy path. She had a puzzle book in her handbag to help her fill in the time; that’s a major no-no but she knew I wouldn’t dob her in.
Marilyn had the same oppo as yesterday, the oldest one of the supervisors who has been doing the job for too many years. I think she is his designated minder to make sure he doesn’t make too many blunders.
There were 22 on my list and 3 didn’t turn up, so it was an easy afternoon. The paper was three hours long, there were no dramas and nobody even needed to go to the toilet so I had a chance to practise my observation skills again. The gender mix is 16 girls, 3 boys; maybe the boys don’t see Psychology as being macho enough for them. Of the 3 males, 2 are bearded. Of course, this cohort is about a year older than we were in our final school year and kids of today mature earlier, but I still find it incongruous to see school students who are not clean-shaven.
One of the bearded students is the most interesting person in the room. He’s tall, well-built and has a significant tattoo on his left forearm. I wonder how he paid for it. Did his parents encourage him to get the tattoo and agree to fund it? Or did he have a part-time job and this was how he spent his earnings? When I looked closely, I saw it was a long-stemmed rose, not exactly what I was expecting. I imagine what my father would have said if I had gone home with my first 10 shilling pay packet and announced I was saving it up to get a long-stemmed rose tattoo on my forearm. Every penny I earned in my part-time jobs went into clothes or the latest Everley Bros record.
The boy has let the front and left-side of his hair grow long. He’s bleached it and died it pink. It hangs down over one eye and one ear like a curtain and he constantly plays with it.
He has a dangly silver earring in his right ear but I can’t see what’s in his left for the curtain of hair. He also has a habit of tossing his head so the hair flies out.
It’s not a particularly warm day but the other boy with a beard is wearing what I think might be called a muscle shirt: tight with no arms, designed to show off his physique.
I notice one girl is left-handed and looks awkward with her writing. I wonder, idly,
how many other students are also left-handed. I think I read somewhere that it’s about 1 in 10 people, and it’s often associated with individuals who are creative or artistic. Looking around, the only other ‘leftie’ I can see is the boy with the pink hair. Hmm!
Glancing at the clock I notice it’s time to make another announcement. One hour has elapsed and there are still two to go. Ho hum.
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