17 hours

I have a little less than 17 hours until I turn in my final final for the semester. It is going relatively well. I'm in a good place and can probably even go to bed now if I want to. However, I will stay up and work on it a little bit more because I won't be able to sleep anyway.

Today I proctored my first exam for the 110 class. Now, our scheduled exam time is the LAST exam of the week -- 7:15-9:15 p.m. on Friday. Yuck. My professor is an incredibly nice man who understands that some students might not want to stay that long. So he applied for an received an alternative exam time this morning, which he offered in addition to the regular exam.

Now, we had about half the class show up. The kids were great, the exam went well.

Except that we seem to be missing a test.

You see, we (the professor and I) always lay the tests out on chairs before the kids come in. That way, we can stagger the tests if we want and have some control over where they sit. We did that this time, and staggered the tests at every other chair so no one would be sitting next to someone else.

At the beginning of the class, my professor walked up the stairs in the middle of the classroom and noticed that there seemed to be a chair in which no one was sitting that should have had an exam but didn't. So what were the possibilities?

1. We forgot to place an exam on the chair.
2. The exam fell of the chair and is wandering around on the floor.
3. Someone stole the exam.

We didn't see the test on the floor and the professor thought he put one on the chair. So we were left with option three.

What is the solution?

We searched 75 students' bags as they left the room.

No exam. But the kids were great. They were incredibly understanding. And I got to see all sorts of fabulous bags that the undergrads can afford. :)

We counted the exams when the class was over.

He had 166.

He ordered 165.

So we're not exactly sure what happened, other than an exam spontaneously budding, or perhaps the counter gave us an extra. We feel better about it now that we know we at least have as many as we're supposed to.

We shall see.