Legal Commentary

My environmental law exam is set to start in a few minutes, and so I've come to the office early to sit here and wait for "the call."  By "the call," of course, I mean the hypothetical call from the registrar or someone else that I could conceivably receive sometime during the next three hours informing me that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong on my exam.  For example, I don't know, something like the plaintiff's name keeps changing and so the students can't tell who I'm talking about in the second paragraph, or maybe there's a sentence missing or a page missing or it says there are three questions but there are only two or I don't have any idea what else "the call" might be about.  I should say that in eight years of teaching and stressing out over whether I'm going to get "the call," I have never actually gotten "the call," but this doesn't mean that I'm still not freaking out and hoping that I don't get it this time around (in this way, it's sort of how I still really worry every single class session that I'm going to run out of material to talk about with 45 minutes left in the class, even though in probably 600 class sessions it's never happened a single time).

More generally, I should say that I find this whole time around exams very stressful.  I'm sure many other prawfs feel the same.  The whole building is filled with stressed out people; the students who I like so much are going through all this stress and anguish; I'm worried that I'm going to get "the call."  I find that I even have dreams in which I realize I've changed the plaintiff's name and so the students can't tell who I'm talking about in the second paragraph, or even more outlandish scenarios like I've asked a long question about church-state law on my environmental law exam or maybe even accidentally written one of the questions in a foreign language.  I guess I should take solace in the fact that while I'm having these particular kinds of anxiety dreams, at least I'm not having my typical anxiety dreams, which often involve sitting in one of my colleague's classes as a student having not done the reading and hoping I don't get called on, or, as has been happening ever since Obama was elected, sitting in his classroom as a student having not done the reading and hoping I don't get called on.  Incidentally, I'll just mention that a couple of weeks ago, while having one of these Obama-is-my-Professor anxiety dreams, he did actually call on me.  He asked me: "What is the second most prevalent reason that people object to the Star Spangled Banner?"  I answered: "Because it interrupts the game?"  And he said: "Not the game.  A book."  I don't know what that meant.  I guess I should be happy that I at least was able to croak out some answer, especially because when he called on me he called me "Jason Wiebe."  I responded: "Me?  I'm Jay Wexler."  He responded, "yeah, you."

Anyone else stressed about getting "the call" or have any fun or horrible "the call" stories they'd care to share?