If you can keep from laughing when all about you
are panicking and it’s not your fault, you will be a decent human. 

This is especially true when your voice is needed.

Today one of my colleagues at the school where I work discovered a mistake on the listening section of the exam. Because it was part of a logic problem, the mistake effected more than one question and made it impossible for us to simply make corrections on the board.

Unfortunately, the mistake was discovered just 15 minutes before the exam started which limited the possible options.

It was decided that we should rerecord one line of the listening test–yes, it was one wrong name in one line that caused all this–and then quickly splice the line in and burn a new CD and then play that for the listening.

This meant my voice was needed which meant I had to do actual work. We got the key to the recording studio but two of us had our IDs and passwords rejected by the network, proving the exam was cursed. Eventually we were able to record the listening, but decided to warn the Powers What Are that the listening test had to be postponed.

(Note: all this could have been accomplished by having me do a live reading of the entire mistaken section of the exam and I would have except for “work” and “lazy”.

In the end, it all seemed to work out. My voice sounded awesome and one colleague proved to be an expert at splicing it in so that my voice sounded awesome seamlessly.

I felt sorry for the colleague in charge of the exam as I’ve been there when things went wrong and everyone was looking at me.

We’ll still tease him about it, but we’ll be more careful about the exams in the future…