Maths Invigilation

I know some of you are waiting for our news from Oman (amazing trip and lots of photos being organized now), and others of you are waiting for my response to your personal emails. But our Internet service at home has been down for several days now (Billy's about to strangle the technician scheduler), and I've not got lots of extra time at work. However, I've just been through an interesting cultural experience that I think I've got just enough time to share with you.

Bear in mind please that in the UAE and much of the Gulf region they speak an English that we linguists like to call 'Global English'. What that means is they've taken on a British vernacular in business, an American vernacular in daily life, and then put their own Arabic-influenced accent on top of it. My workplace is dominated by British materials and people, and therefore we operate under British norms. So you think, What does this mean? British norms. It means 'MathS' for example, MathS with an 'S'. And it means 'faffing around' instead of 'messing around', and it means that when you say the word 'meeting', you must say it in an awfully formal and English-ey way - super-pronouncing the T, ie. meeeTing, if you want anyone to take you seriously.

Two days ago, I got an email with this subject line: MATHS Invigilation. And I'm thinking this must be a typo or some wierd joke from the guys who teach mathS and statistics or some new word invented by a student assistant, you know, in the place of maybe invigoration, imagination, invitation and so on. But the Scottish, English and Turkish faculty in my little quad of cubes are all shocked when I ask 'what on earth is INVIGILATION?'! And so they tell me that it's the same as what on American campuses is called test proctoring. Now I love the English folks most of the time, and I find their accent lovely in fact, but here's where I say, come on guys, Are You Serious?

The email informed me that it was my turn to proctor (or INVIGILATE) a test for the mathS department. On the appointed day I showed up at the Multi-purpose Hall and in filed almost 200 first year business students with their pencils, erasers and calculators. My job was to make sure they all signed in and took their seats. Once the test began, I had to pace the aisles with 6 other faculty, looking over the shoulders of the test takers. During this 90 minute test here were some cultural observations I was able to make. First off, the vast majority of these women have large, bling-bling style, expensive brand-name handbags, all gently placed at the foot of their desks. Second, at least 6 in ten have elaborate henna tatoos on their hands. Though these wear off after several weeks, I've noticed that some of my gals go weekly for new ones to the salon. Also, though I have only two gals who cover their faces during my class, five more of them chose to wear veils in the test situation, due to the presence of male INVIGILATORS. This is still striking to me, since in some ways this country can seem so Western and only very mildly Islamic. But it's striking again when I think about how absolutely shocking the 'real world' (Mall of the Emirates) must be for these people whose parents hardly ever heard English in the streets or saw uncovered women around town. At any rate, the lovely thing about INVIGILATION is that since it is a completely silent environment, I was allowed the luxury of taking my cultural observations and mulling them over bit by bit, as I wandered between the Louis Vuitton and the Prada, the Henna and the Veils.