General Rules to Test Proctoring

Things not to do while working as a proctor:

1) Reading
2) Browsing through a cell phone, book, iPad, or anything fun.
3) Close your eyes.
4) Sit down for extended periods of time (this may lead to closing your eyes, after all.)
5) Playing baseball. Or WordWithFriends, or Scramble...or Solitaire. You cannot play Solitaire. You will lose your job.

Essentially. If you want to keep a job as a proctor I only have two pieces of advice for you:

1) Be content in your own brain. Remember fun things. Think fun thoughts. If you cannot do this, do not Proctor more than once a week. It will, and I'm not kidding here, it will feel like torture.

2) Have a photographic memory and look at every page of multiple books. What your bosses don't know can't hurt them.

 Going along with this little message, I spent the morning proctoring an End of Course assessment test, I won't go into detail, mainly because it's illegal, but I was sufficiently bored. Occasionally I walk around the room to make sure I can't spot any cell phones or iPods or anything like talking or cheating that can invalidate a student's test.

Occasionally I'll see a question on a monitor and see if I know the answer. It's not something I do on purpose, it just happens as I walk around. I never talk about the questions I see, even with other proctors, what would be the point? But it is funny to see how the kids look at me:

Their eyes gets shifty, they hunch up over their papers as if that's where the answers even were. Then they block their monitors with their shoulder, just a little bit. Like I'm going to steal their work and ace this test off of what they are doing.

I just want to say to these kids: Dude, I wish I was taking the damn test. Instead, I'm watching you take the test. 

This is where I would like to say something like, "My mornings are interesting." And sign off, when all I can really say about my mornings is that they're drawn out and I sigh a lot.