Exam-am-am-am-am...

Students have had exams all of the last two weeks. Which means I hang out at the office for English-language consulting purposes and occasionally to mark stuff. I do have the disadvantage of only being able to mark certain things, because as far as Japanese-to-English translation goes, I’m pretty worthless. And because I have four schools, the exam period, which would only take three days at any particular school, takes two weeks since they all have different schedules. This morning on the train to Oiwake all the students on the train had their composition books out and were pouring over geometry graphs and handwritten notes. I miss having such studying to do, and it made me feel old to recall when I was a senior and was studying my ass off and cramming information in my head that I knew I wouldn’t remember mere hours before a test. Sigh.

Yesterday at one school I was helping to check translations with my JTE (Japanese Teacher of English, for those of you who haven’t been keeping up with the shop-talk), and, boy, were there some winners! The model answer was supposed to go something like “I used to skate cheerfully like a child, but now I skate elegantly like an adult,” (it was a newspaper quote from a Japanese figure skater who recently made a come-back at a competition). One student wrote, “My skating used to be naughty, but now it is like an adult’s skating.” The use of naughty here is brilliant.

Another student wrote, “But now my skating has become adulty.” And I think this person should get props for the invention of a new adjective.

In a different section of that same exam, a student wrote “This picture’s topic is that children are simple animals.” We have a low opinion of children, apparently.

Several students also invented the word “satisficated,” which I plan to start incorporating into my daily vocabulary. And although I appreciated the comedic aspect of these answers, they still got marked wrong. Because, well, they are wrong.

I am going to Tokyo this weekend, and then return to normal teaching next week, when I am also having my window in my shower room fixed, a request which turned into a much bigger deal than I anticipated. What started with, “Hey, I can’t close the window in my shower because the corner hits the side of the building, and it’s now winter,” became two separate visits from the repair man and an upcoming multiple-hour fixing session.

For the present, I am sitting in the office next to the big window and the heater, watching the rain fall on the fields outside and drinking my fifth cup of coffee in three hours. I haven’t been this caffeinated in a long time…since last week…so I’m not planning on stopping now.