No phone zone!

Well what a long week!

A full week of exam invigilation. Most people think exam invigilation is easy, boring, what do you do? There is so much responsibility once you flip from mocks to 'real' exams. 

I tend to be with access arrangement students, often on laptops at the back of the main hall, often ×10, or sometimes in a separate room as a 1-1 reader/scribe, or with a student with rest breaks, or a combination of it all!!......there can be a lot going on and it has to be right!! As with anything I do, I take it seriously and am dependable to do a good job, so am now often a lead, with new invigilators to train too! And any spare slots I'd kept free for the occasional coffee date or walk with my friend, have rapidly been filled!! So I am in pretty much every day am and pm, for the remaining four and half weeks of exams. Add in a few clash supervision sessions too, there isn't room for much else!

The school is a no phone zone, exams are no phone zones, my phone has been in silent mode all week and it's actually been quite refreshing, but as a result I've not a lot to share!!

Annoyingly, the minute you commit to something 'inside', the weather is glorious!! Thankfully it has remained so for the majority of the weekend and we've been able to enjoy our meals outside.

I've even been reading!!

One of the many symptoms of menopause, has been my ability to read a book. In lockdown I read loads. I used to always read in the summer or whilst we were where on holiday, but for the past few years I have just not been able to focus/concentrate/enjoy reading a book. I have tried! At night I'd read a few pages, the following night read the same few pages, and so on. In the day I could just not concentrate or retain anything that I had read. So I gave up! Jeff and Sophie have been giving me books they think I'd enjoy and I've tried a Kindle, which didn't flip any magic switch either. But whilst we were in Crete, I did manage to read a book and I've got half way through this one which I'm enjoying. Although it's been in bursts at the weekend, as my ability to read at bedtime is still absent!! I just need to get to grips with reading on a kindle, ready for our summer travels!!

The forecast for the week ahead is sun filled!! 

So I will have to enjoy it in between exams. 

Sam hands in his final assessment this week and is coming home for a few days next weekend. He has had to work through all this glorious weather, poor boy. But, the end is in sight, with just one more exam to go and then his time at Uni will be over. Something I wasn't sure he'd achieve, more than once over the past four years. My niece starts her GCSE's next week and as Jeff is Head of Year 11, his next few weeks will be dominated by exams!! I actually hate exams!! Was never any good myself, hated seeing Sophie so stressed by exams, clashed with Sam terribly when he was doing his GCSE exams, so doing exam invigilation is possibly an odd choice, but I just try and make it as stress free as I possibly can for the students I've been allocated. I imagine it's my two and just try to give them a calm, organised, stress free experience. Good luck to them all xx