"The DEBBIL, I tells ya!"

I gave an 11 am to 1 pm final today.

They are of the Devil. I am convinced of it. It is the worst span of time in a day to be forced to sit in a room and pay attention. (And it's bad for the person invigilating, as well).

It is too early to eat lunch before the test. And by the time 1 pm rolls around, it seems almost pointless to eat - it's too late.

One thing about me is that I go through different stages of hunger. I seriously do not understand - having read several semi-autobiographical accounts of people who suffered from anorexia - how someone could praise hunger and talk about how it made them feel "light" and "pure" and all of that.

Because me, hunger just makes me uncomfortable. And increasingly angry, if I can't do anything to alleviate it.

(Which is probably why I'll never successfully lose weight. I'm convinced - and say what you will in the comments, and diet commercials say what THEY will - you cannot lose weight without going around hungry a lot of the time, forcing your body to draw on the fat reserves.)

Anyway. I was okay until shortly before noon. (I really should have eaten something beforehand; I had a bowl of cereal around 6 but that early in the morning I'm generally NOT hungry and I can convince myself, "You can make it until the exam's over"). At noon, I started to get hungry. But then, I was still hopeful - many of the students had finished up and I thought that perhaps they all would very shortly, and I could go and eat something and then grade the finals. And all would be well.

But NOOOOOOOOOO!

I have (had, I guess I have to say now) one person in that class who is VERY meticulous. Has to check everything 3 times. Also writes slowly. Also second-guesses himself. So he kept working as other people handed in their finals and left.

The different stages of hunger began. First, there was annoyance - "I really would like to get out of here and eat." Then frustration - "why can't this guy just finish and leave? He's got an A already!" Then anger - "They ALWAYS stick me with this exam time. I ALWAYS get the schedule where I have to eat at funky times and it screws up my metabolism." Then exhaustion - "Oh, man, I have to grade these AND it's Youth Group tonight; I wonder what my co-leader would say if I called her up and bailed out"

Finally, you reach Bargaining. As in, if Satan himself showed up with a peanut-butter sandwich on a platter, I'd actually consider swapping my soul for it. (Not that I actually WOULD but the fact that I'd actually consider it shows how far gone I was at that point.)

And then there's the sort of out-of-body experience, where you stop being hungry, where you kind of stop feeling everything. That was at about 10 minutes to 1.

When it also began raining heavily, meaning getting out and getting food (I had not bothered to pack a lunch) would be more complicated. Still my Mr. Diligent wasn't done writing.

He finally finished. And as I was leaving, I was accosted by:

1. a student from that class who had missed the exam because of an emergency medical problem
2. a student from one of my other classes who "needed" to take her final early, and hadn't shown up when she said she would
3. one of our majors NEEDING to be counseled into classes RIGHT THIS MOMENT because he was "fixin' to" go out of town.

Whimper. I swear that sometimes it's as if people can sense when I'm in distress - when I need to eat, or when I'm really tired, or when I have to pee so badly I can think of nothing else - and they come to me and they NEED stuff. And they NEED it then.

Well, for #1, I fixed it by telling her there was someone else who had a conflict coming in at a particular time tomorrow, so that fixed it. #3 I was able to farm off onto one of the other faculty (And I will not bother to rant on students waiting until the last possible moment to get course-counseling and then being put out that the faculty member they demand it of cannot help them right then). #2 is taking the exam under the supervision of the secretary, who always brings her lunch.

So I managed to eat. Sonic's "Chicken Strip Dinner," which I am not proud of, but at least it contained protein, which I desperately needed at that moment. (I didn't eat most of the fries. I'm not fond of fries.) Had I gone home for a "healthier" meal, it would have been a salad (ugh, which is the same as what I had last night for dinner) and some of those little low-fat laughing cow cheese wedges. (I really need to get to the grocery but as I'm leaving for a short vacation very soon I don't like to buy much food ahead).

But seriously, I think 11 am to 1 pm exam slots may violate one of the precepts of the Geneva convention. (I'd bring food with me save for 2 things: first, the classroom I teach in is designated a lab, which means it's technically illegal to bring in food, and second, there's the old "did you bring enough for everyone" issue, or, more practically, I don't want to open the door for students bringing tuna fish and foot-cheese sandwiches and all kinds of other horribly stinky things in to eat).