My day. I got up at 6.45, was at the university by 7.45 where the
DSH took place, the most important
exam for
foreigners who want to study as regular students in
Germany.
They have to pass the exam which consists of a reading comprehension, an essay and a grammar part- and later on-for those who passed the first part - an oral examination.
Not easy. It´s a four-hour exam and my first job today was to check them in according to their surnames. Crowds of faces at the entrance and me. Excellent.
They all sort of lined up and we waited in front of the doors of the Hörsaal the exam took place in.
A Russian boy started inquiring what I did ( my first reply: I ´m standing here, checking you in, his reply: no, I mean, in general, my reply: I´m a student here, his reply: what do you study ?? and so forth, till I asked round whether anybody else wanted to know anything personal about me, which shut him up ).
The doors opened and my boss asked me to watch out for people trying to cheat, openening the envelope early..excellent.
First a caught a guy who tried to hide a bilingual dictionary, other “incidents” followed and I felt really bad, because usually I am one of them, not the evil teacher-type person.
It finally made my day when at the end two men refused to stop writing and wouldn´t stop copying a text even though I asked them five times to stop. One of them started insulting me and I had to call my boss. It all ended in a near fight, the guy had to be thrown out, and somebody had to walk me to my bike in case he would get even more aggressive.
So I arrived in a fantastically cheerful mood at the Akademisches Auslandsamt, where I spend another 5 hours working. Generally I like working there, even though at times the American students are a little too much.
First my ex-favourite student came and again started talking about his bed-sheets I had called tasteless earlier on ( they were really tasteless, in a kind of cheap tiger pattern ) when he had shown us pictures of his room and half-naked people in the bed.
It always appears to end in talking about sex one way or the other. So today he told me, he knew the sheets were tasteless ( ok. interesting ) and that he wanted to wear a skirt one of these days, apparently a tight one. He is clearly crazy or desperate.
I more or less left him standing where he was. After my morning, I wasn´t in the right mood to go on talking senseless rubbish.
And now I´m home! Thank God!