teacher, exam thyself

This week finds me in the awkward position of drafting a final exam for my logic and rhetoric students at the same time I'm taking my own finals.

I've made a funny discovery.

While I draft the exam (take-home, open-book! how much more gracious can a teacher get?) I picture my students calmly and joyously taking it straight home, where they will deliberately and carefully examine each question while sitting tranquilly in a clean and well-lit workspace, accompanied by their textbook and their impeccably neat notes from class. As they progress through the exam, each one striving to do his absolute best, they will smile pensively and think loving thoughts about what a wonderful teacher I've been and how much they enjoyed my lectures. One or two might even shed a tear at the prospect of class being over in only one week.

While my own finals approach, I search frantically for the class notes that I stuffed into a stack somewhere in my room as soon as I walked in the door and haven't really thought about since the first week in the semester. After partaking happily in the many social distractions of the season, I leave everything school-related to the last minute, and end up doing my take-home speech test in the school parking lot before walking into class. While I study (if you can really call it that), I shake my head and wonder why the teacher seems to think this is the only class her students have to worry about this week. Instead of working on my research paper, I spend the morning seeing how strong I can safely brew the coffee and calculating just how few points I really have to earn to keep my "A" in the class. I also reflect on all the ways class could have been improved to make life easier on the students, and chant "one more class! one more class!" to keep up my morale.

Oh well.

Even then, though, I can't help but think that my kids will love their final. It's the best take-home logic exam ever! They can't help but see the wit in it, the art of it, the beauty of it. They will. I know they will . . .