Tolerance

The irises are absolutely wonderful this year. This is one of the first to come out, and there are dozens more budding.

It’s a busy time in the garden; potting up, planting out and heaps of watering all need my time. In an ideal world I’d concentrate on that alone for the remainder of November. But my shoestring budget needs a wee injection of hard cash once a year, which I get from supervising NCEA exams at one of the local high schools. I use the income to pay for the car service, WOF and repairs.

The exams started yesterday and I worked on my first one today. Originally I was scheduled to supervise just five exams, but there is an element of chaos taking over and now I have been asked to be first reserve for a further eight, some of which have already been confirmed.

I’m leading the digital exams (the students have the choice in some cases of doing them on paper or on the computer) which adds a level of complexity to the process which some supervisors are very nervous about tackling: to the point that they decide to ‘wing it’, which is less than helpful.

Today almost turned to custard as I tried to herd 17 students on their computers which weren’t behaving properly, while trying to help two assistant supervisors press the right buttons in the right order to allow the kids to carry on with their exams. We only had two students locked out thanks to ‘over-helpful’ adults, who then panicked.

Give me strength. My tolerance was tested.

It can only get better…