Things That Happen In Every Maltese Examination Room
Exam season is coming up, and stress isn’t the only thing it breaks with it.
Sitting down for exams is surely a difficult time for everyone involved, but if it makes you feel any better, you’re not the first (nor will you be the last) to sit down in an examination room. From stories – and past experiences – here’s our list of eight things that will happen whilst you’re taking your test in Malta.
Pull your pants and socks up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
1. The person that leaves ASAP
The person who is not having anything to do with the exam. If you look over you can see that they wrote their name on the paper, the date, and only answered question four.
They always seem to be in a constant rotation of looking at their watch and falling asleep. The second they’re able to they’re out of the class, quicker than you can say ‘fallejtha’.
2. The person having a mental breakdown
That one person in the exam room who is literally shitting bricks the moment the invigilator hands over the paper.
You can physically see the droplets of sweat running down their forehead, and dropping onto the paper. Watching them spend two hours in a constipated state of torture is uncomfortable to everyone around.
3. The one who forgot everything
We don’t mean that they forgot all their studying, we mean they literally forgot all their things at home; from their calculator to their pens and rubbers.
The state of panic they go through as they turn their bag inside out looking for their things would be funny if it wasn’t so heartbreaking.
4. Invigilator speech
The moment you’ve not been waiting for.
Those awkward 10 minutes before the exam starts, when everyone in the classroom is berated by the invigilator. Going over the same ‘rules’ you’ve been adhering to for the last 10 years of your life. The entire classroom just stares around and at their turned over exam paper, fighting the nerves and hoping this would just be over quicker.
5. That one phone that magically goes off
Just about an hour into the exam your senses start tingling.
It starts off as an almost inaudible vibration noise, causing your ears to perk up. You’re one of the first to notice. The iPhone tune starts playing in one of the bags to the side. Every beat causing more and more people to lose focus. The mayhem is only stopped when the invigilator asks the guilty party to rise and switch their phone off.
6. People attempting to cheat
Believe it or not, there are people who actually try and cheat their way to a passing grade! If only they spent half the time studying instead of thinking of ways to cheat.
Doubtless in an exam, you may see a couple of people trying to communicate one way or another with each other. From sign language to smoke signals across the room. When your religion O Level is on the line, nothing is off limits.
7. The irritating sounds
If it’s not the coughing, it’s the unexplainable table with one leg shorter than the other three.
An inquiry should be posed to any schooling body; the fact that this atrocity occurs to tables every year is beyond us. Lose your ruler as you shove it under the desk to try balance it out.
8. The people who ask for extra papers
Who are these people?
Seriously, why do they need 12 more papers than everyone else? Their hand, as if controlled by a timer, goes up every four minutes to ask for more writing paper. It feels like they’re writing their last will and testament during the examination, or starting up an international paper-plane industry.
You watch them from the corner of your eye. Counting paper by paper, you begin to lose your mind. Are they skipping lines? They must have huge hand writing. There must be a reason beyond that you should be writing this much too.
