adventures in proctoring...

the registrar's office asks students who are already on the law school payroll to proctor finals. i'm a TA, and although my measly $140/month barely qualifies, i am officially on the payroll. and since my only two exams this time around happened to occur on the second day of the finals period, i signed up for lots of proctoring.

so far i've done two days. but i also proctored last semester. i'm gonna make a bold statement here: first year law students are better test takers than are second and third years. they follow directions better, ask more intelligent questions about the administration of the test, and seem to be more respectful of each other during the test time.

now, i've been lucky -- the first year finals i've proctored have been disaster-free. i don't know what would happen if a 1L's computer were to freeze in the middle of an essay, but it's not a stretch to imagine an occurrence of mass hysteria. when bad things happen, i would bet that generally, the upperclassmen have the upper hand. at least they've heard the horror stories about so-and-so whose computer started emitting sparks and smoke halfway through the property final and nonetheless what had been written was recoverable. the upperclassmen have all seen somebody from the IT department come in during the finals to save the day for a computer that called it quits.

still, i like the first years. a lot better than the second years. is this because i've never had classes with the first years and i have no knowledge of what percentage of them are insufferable gunners? is this because i had a really good experience with my first year writing students? is this because i'm graduating at the end of the month and i'm sickly nostalgic for the good old early days of law school? i dunno...

but yeah, i'd rather proctor the first year finals. they're so earnest and dedicated! i miss that...