You know what scares the shit out of me?
New things… or stuff that I don’t feel like I’m particularly skilled at. They freak me out big time.
Our university now enforces online exams for groups that exceed forty students and this was all communicated at short notice. This included all courses I teach. Our zoology course was first on the list. As a co-responsible for this course, I freaked out. Quite a few times. Panic attacks and other psychosomatic horror included. Last Wednesday, the exam support team finally gave access to our exam, so I could finally give a shot at understanding the exam management system. While freaking out, I started filling all the exam components and created a test exam. We tested everything. It worked. Yesterday, we finally enrolled our first students.
I sort of slept last night. Until 03:30. Eyes wide open. A rush of adrenaline.
Fuck!
Did I remove the exam questions from the test environment?
Shit, shit, SHIT!
I literally sat on the toilet with a laptop on my knees* in the middle of the night to check our exam once more to verify that everything was alright. Everything was all fine.
Thursday morning we’re on.
——————————————————————————————————————* I’m generally not a fan of multitasking, but it turns out taking a mid-night piss can be combined very well with checking Moodle environments to soothe the demons inside you going: “You fucked up again, Robin”. Any other moment I would advise against multitasking, but admittedly, I don’t always practice what I preach…
Robin Heinen 