Imagine walking through a sea of distracted engineers, free to ogle as your heart desires. I know, this is only appealing to a certain demographic of nerd, but whatever. How did I get this privilege? Last Friday I proctored the morning session of the Principles and Practice in Engineering Exam at the Jamil Temple. How did I get involved in this? A friend told me about it, and it paid $13 an hour to walk around and minimize your yawn volume.
The space is basically an enormous high school gymnasium filled with row upon row of folding tables and chairs. We had 251 people signed up to take the 8 hour test (2 sessions or 4 hours each). It consists of practical problems and it's open-book, so the engineers lined up at the door a little before 7 were trailing behind them any and all types of item conveyance, from bins of books on dollies to actual suitcases that I myself would fit into were I folded properly. There was even a guy with a small rolling bookshelf, a solution I found rather ingenious. As they entered, we had to check each person's letter of admittance and their photo id, giving me a chance to scope them out at my leisure.
Once they were all seated, we had to explain to them all the specificities of this particular test, of which there were a great many. They could only use the pencil provided to them, no other personal pencils. Their materials had to be bound - no loose pieces of reference paper allowed. Many of them had brought a multitude of snacks and drinks, but those things had to stay on the floor. With two engineers to a table, and 8 hours of anxiety at stake, if someone spilled a drink on someone else's exam, there would have been an engineer smack-down. (I can only imagine would that would look like btw.) The list of rules went on, the test began, and we proctors had 4 long hours in which to find amusement as best we could.
This is when it occurred to us proctors that here was an entire gym of distracted engineers who wouldn't notice if we stared at them for a while. It was also freezing, so pausing in one place too long might have resulted in hypothermia. What else were we to do but wander around, scoping out future husbands? This process was facilitated by the fact that the male to female ratio was approximately 75/25, providing a large number of potential mates to choose from. We would wander about the room, pick out a cute one or two, check for a ring, and make a mental note of their section and seat number before returning to the front of the room to pass their information on to the other floating proctors for approval. We also kept a keen eye out for any misconduct, obviously.
And while this was all in jest and in the sake of maintaining our proctorial diligence (this is actually a pretty boring job), there is something to be said for choosing a husband from this little pool. They're all engineers, so they're at least kind of smart. They're educated, indicating some combination of income, drive, and/or resourcefulness. They are more than likely employed because they can afford to take this ridiculously expensive test. They are prepared (look at all those books!) and willing / able to show up on time mentally prepared to tackle 8 hours of rigorous, timed, high-stress problem solving. Because they're engineers, all the stereotypes about social skill deficits must be considered, but one imagines that a woman (or gay man) could do worse.
You could also tell a great deal from how they were taking the test. How many books did they bring? Are they an overpreparation type, or the kind who shows up with a few key references? If they just had a few books, does that mean they were better equipped to distinguish the wheat from the chaff or are they just cocky? Some of them handled the stress well, working steadily, stretching occasionally. Others were clearly barely hanging on, twitching, running their fingers frantically through their hair. One woman took her hair down out of its ponytail and put it back up about once every fifteen minutes. There was also the situation where someone realized that the one book they needed was the one they didn't bring. I saw one guy almost cry. Others looked severely distressed, but pressed on with another approach. So not only was the population pre-selected, but the activity itself was conducive to learning a lot about one's future partner.
It should be noted that even after all that, 4 hours of circling like a bird of prey, I did not, in fact, meet an engineer. Interfering with their testing would have resulted in me losing my hard-earned cash, not to mention the fact that they weren't exactly thinking about lady-meeting at the time. Nevertheless, it made the Friday morning pass relatively painlessly, and I met a couple of highly amusing female graduate students who were instrumental in the ogling process.
I've had a number of interesting experiences like this lately, and I've been a little slack about writing about them, but I hope to get. on. the. ball. and pick back up now that summer is arriving.
The space is basically an enormous high school gymnasium filled with row upon row of folding tables and chairs. We had 251 people signed up to take the 8 hour test (2 sessions or 4 hours each). It consists of practical problems and it's open-book, so the engineers lined up at the door a little before 7 were trailing behind them any and all types of item conveyance, from bins of books on dollies to actual suitcases that I myself would fit into were I folded properly. There was even a guy with a small rolling bookshelf, a solution I found rather ingenious. As they entered, we had to check each person's letter of admittance and their photo id, giving me a chance to scope them out at my leisure.
Once they were all seated, we had to explain to them all the specificities of this particular test, of which there were a great many. They could only use the pencil provided to them, no other personal pencils. Their materials had to be bound - no loose pieces of reference paper allowed. Many of them had brought a multitude of snacks and drinks, but those things had to stay on the floor. With two engineers to a table, and 8 hours of anxiety at stake, if someone spilled a drink on someone else's exam, there would have been an engineer smack-down. (I can only imagine would that would look like btw.) The list of rules went on, the test began, and we proctors had 4 long hours in which to find amusement as best we could.
This is when it occurred to us proctors that here was an entire gym of distracted engineers who wouldn't notice if we stared at them for a while. It was also freezing, so pausing in one place too long might have resulted in hypothermia. What else were we to do but wander around, scoping out future husbands? This process was facilitated by the fact that the male to female ratio was approximately 75/25, providing a large number of potential mates to choose from. We would wander about the room, pick out a cute one or two, check for a ring, and make a mental note of their section and seat number before returning to the front of the room to pass their information on to the other floating proctors for approval. We also kept a keen eye out for any misconduct, obviously.
And while this was all in jest and in the sake of maintaining our proctorial diligence (this is actually a pretty boring job), there is something to be said for choosing a husband from this little pool. They're all engineers, so they're at least kind of smart. They're educated, indicating some combination of income, drive, and/or resourcefulness. They are more than likely employed because they can afford to take this ridiculously expensive test. They are prepared (look at all those books!) and willing / able to show up on time mentally prepared to tackle 8 hours of rigorous, timed, high-stress problem solving. Because they're engineers, all the stereotypes about social skill deficits must be considered, but one imagines that a woman (or gay man) could do worse.
You could also tell a great deal from how they were taking the test. How many books did they bring? Are they an overpreparation type, or the kind who shows up with a few key references? If they just had a few books, does that mean they were better equipped to distinguish the wheat from the chaff or are they just cocky? Some of them handled the stress well, working steadily, stretching occasionally. Others were clearly barely hanging on, twitching, running their fingers frantically through their hair. One woman took her hair down out of its ponytail and put it back up about once every fifteen minutes. There was also the situation where someone realized that the one book they needed was the one they didn't bring. I saw one guy almost cry. Others looked severely distressed, but pressed on with another approach. So not only was the population pre-selected, but the activity itself was conducive to learning a lot about one's future partner.
It should be noted that even after all that, 4 hours of circling like a bird of prey, I did not, in fact, meet an engineer. Interfering with their testing would have resulted in me losing my hard-earned cash, not to mention the fact that they weren't exactly thinking about lady-meeting at the time. Nevertheless, it made the Friday morning pass relatively painlessly, and I met a couple of highly amusing female graduate students who were instrumental in the ogling process.
I've had a number of interesting experiences like this lately, and I've been a little slack about writing about them, but I hope to get. on. the. ball. and pick back up now that summer is arriving.
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