From Student to Teacher: My First Exam Day As A Teaching Assistant

Hello guys,
I hope you’re having a good day and a great week. I’m also having a good week so far. As you may or may not know, I started National Service a few weeks ago. If you do not know what national service(NSS) is, it is an initiative in my country that requires university graduates to serve our nation for one whole year after completing the university.

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This year, our NSS started on 1st November but I started around 6th November. Since I’m doing my NSS as a teaching assistant in my school there’s not much work to do around here these days because the students are on holidays. This gives me more time for my personal work while getting used to the people at my office. So far , I enjoy working here because it’s not that stressful for now and the people here are really chill.

Yesterday we had to conduct an exam for the level 100 students in my department since they recently came back from their third trimester field trip program and needed to write their last paper for the semester before going home for their vacation. I hawv written so many exams in my life but this was my first time invigilating students. I guess I moved from the student to the teacher.

It came off as a surprise to me when I saw all these students in white and when I asked I was told that was how they dressed for their final exams. I can imagine what they would do if they were to write their final exams for the university.😂 To make things worse, they all wore their lab coast before coming in to sit for the exams. I was actually laughing in my head, if only they knew the questions that had been set for them.

Their exams was quite a simple one, we gave them 16 sheets each since the exam was going to be conducted in stations so every sheet for a station. Every station was to last for 5 minutes and from then the question on the screen was going to change to the next station. We gave them some time to prepare and when they were all set we began.

After each station we would collect the answer sheets and keep them separately for each station until the last one. The first three questions seemed easy for them but as they kept progressing I could see some of them sweating.😂 Then the whispering started, students will always be students. After the 8th station we decided to give them a break because they said the questions were difficult. We gave them 10 minutes to relax and we continued from there.

Finally we made it to the last station which as the 16th and from the look on their faces you could see some of them weren’t happy. But guess what? That didn’t stop them from taking a lot of pictures once they left the exams hall. I remember doing that same thing during my university days. I guess students are very much alike.

Being my first time invigilating an exam, I would say it wasn’t a bad experience as I was able to understand and connect with the students more since I had been in their situation before. I think I’m actually going to enjoy working here as I get to learn something new everyday. I hope you enjoyed reading, thank you for your time.

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all images belong to me unless stated otherwise.