For Proctors, No-Stress Exams

Even the hardest working undergraduates don’t sit for as many Harvard exams as retired public school teacher Leslie Oliver.

This exam period Oliver sat through seven exams without ever cracking open a blue book.

“I like to be in touch with students,” said Oliver, who taught English at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School for years.

As ex-teachers, many College exam proctors enjoy the classroom setting and the engagement with students, but some will admit a more pragmatic reason for overseeing exams.

Virginia Hutchinson, a retired teacher from the Woburn Public School System, has been proctoring at Harvard for 12 years. She says proctoring is “an interesting way to make some extra money.”

“It’s a minimal time commitment,” says retired teacher Fran Sullivan of this twice-yearly way to earn money.

The commitment, while minimal, entails more than just showing up for the exam.

Proctors must attend a mandatory orientation where they go over the rules outlined in the handbook for proctors, which contains the text read out at the beginning of each exam.

Hutchinson says she enjoys the attention to the minutiae of administering an exam—the “many little parts to the job.”

In addition to reading the examination procedures aloud at the beginning of the exam and monitoring the activities of test-takers, proctors must compare the exam attendance slips to a class roster provided by the instructor. For tests in large lecture halls, this can be particularly tedious and time-consuming.

Still, there are ways to keep proctoring fresh. Sullivan, who has been working as a proctor for five years, likes overseeing exams in an array of disciplines.

“The different subjects have their own flavor, so it doesn’t get boring,” she says.

Oliver, a former English teacher, says he’d like the opportunity to proctor an English exam. In his first year, he has proctored primarily science and math exams.

Proctors, who are hired by the Office of the Registrar of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, do not get to choose which examinations they administer.

“You indicate your willingness to work at certain times and Harvard matches it up with what they need,” Sullivan states.

Liz McDonough, former coach and physical education teacher in the Arlington school system, finds ways to keep herself busy during the exam.

“I sometimes get a kick out of looking at an extra copy of the exam,” McDonough says, though she says she never looks at the students’ responses.

And then there are the actual incidents, the exam horror stories, that necessitate proctor intervention.

Hutchinson recalls escorting a student to the hospital after he collapsed “about 20 minutes into the exam.”

The exam was given to the student at University Health Services when he recovered. It was administered by a proctor who is stationed there during all exams in case of an emergency.

While rare, these situations require substantial advance planning. Not only is there a proctor camped out at UHS, but the protectors are instructed to read emergency protocols at the beginning of every exam.

Oliver hesitates in reciting all these contingency plans.

“Sometimes I get embarrassed to say ‘you will be held incommunicado,’” he says.

That the sequestering of an ill—or ill-prepared—student seems far-fetched may be a testament to the efficiency of the exam administration.

As McDonough explains, “It is our job to make the exam setting as uneventful as possible.”