"No Fondling During Exams!"

As many of my readers know, I'm a teaching assistant in Alaska at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. That means that I spend 20-30 hours a week doing various teaching related activities, such as teaching the 2 labs I run, or grading the work from my students.  I've been doing this job as a teaching assistant for several semesters now, and the job never fails to offer interesting and amusing tales that I can't, for the sake of student privacy, normally share on my blog. However, one tale comes to mind that is too strange, confusing, and socially awkward to pass up.

A few semesters back I was teaching a different class than I teach now, though it was another introductory level biology course.  It was filled with the normal mix of students, varying in ages from 17-35 or so, and it was mostly filled with hard-working and fun kids.  Frankly, that part of the class made it rather boring.  After all, when your students are hard-working and industrious it's rare to run across situations like my "Bro-bama Story" where a student decided to be my best buddy and repeatedly overstepped the teacher-student line. The only solace I had in the class of hard-working and studious students was that there was one couple that seemed to offer the rest of us plenty of idiocy to chat about.

This one couple was the stereotype we all dread becoming when we go out with our significant other in public:  They held hands in class, kissed and snuggled to the point of inducing nausea, and they showed up late to class with sex-hair on more than one occasion, including one time showing up with their shirts inside out...both students, shirts inside out, with sex-hair. As you might imagine, this couple (let's call them Thing 1 and Thing 2 for ease's sake) were inseparable, and obsessive, and extremely affectionate. 

Luckily for me, I rarely had to be involved with the lecture portion of the class where the most obvious and over-the-top making out and PDA seemed to occur. Mostly I spent my time focused on the laboratory work I had to handle, and that I taught the students each week, and this work usually involved activities that made constant kissing and groping less likely.  After all, no one wants to make out over a dissected salmon! The only time I really couldn't avoid attending the full lectures and interacting with Thing 1 and Thing 2 was during exams.

Like most college courses, the exams for the class were tough, a little bit longer than anyone ever seemed to expect, and of course you couldn't sit directly next to your significant other since there was a chance you might be more tempted to cheat. Or at least, that's how it's supposed to work.

One day in the middle of the semester we came up to our exam date, and I settled into the front of the class to help keep an eye out for cheating, or to answer any questions students had if the professor was busy answering someone else.  That meant that I was basically spending my time for the next hour carefully watching the students for suspicious activity, like repeatedly picking up water bottles (one student I caught had written answers on the lab and stuck it back onto the plastic bottle) or something else odd. On the exam day in question, no one seemed to notice that Thing 1 and Thing 2 were seated next to each other during this exam, and instead of having a space between them, they were snuggled up nice and close. even as I sat in the front of the room with the professor and another TA, we just didn't seem to realize that out of a nice, evenly spaced class of 80 or so students only 2 students were seated directly next to each other.

The exam was relatively tough, and I spent a lot of my time answering questions about the test instead of looking into the crowd.  That's probably why it was over half way into the exam when I suddenly noticed Thing 1 (the guy) looking oddly intensely at the ceiling.  And then I noticed that his lady-friend, Thing 2, was also looking oddly intently, but not at the ceiling.  She was staring at his crotch.  And as I continued to stare, still not quite realizing that they should be seated a space apart, Thing 1 and Thing 2 started giggling, and my eyes wandered from their faces to their bodies.  Thing 1 had his hand slipped behind Thing 2's back, and appeared to be cupping his girlfriend's butt.  Thing 2's hands were on the, let's just say, crotch region of her man-friend.  Against all odds, these two appeared to be trying to feel each other up in public...during an exam.

I didn't know what to do:  I didn't want to embarrass the students and clearly they weren't cheating.  At the same time, however, this clearly needed to be stopped so I stood up and started walking over to quietly tell them to stop.  As I walked in front of the desk where the professor sat, the professor held up a hand for me and stated, "I'll take care of this."  Apparently, he'd seen the same thing I had, likely at the same time I'd noticed it.

I expected him to quietly walk over and chew them out, or perhaps to make an innocuous announcement in order to remind the students they were in public. Instead, he stood up, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled, "Oi!  Thing 1, Thing 2, I shouldn't have to say this, but no fondling during exams!" 

There was an uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, followed by a myriad of half-suppressed giggles from the other students.  Mortified, Thing 1 and Thing 2 stopped their groping and returned to their tests, faces redder than beets. The professor, seeing he'd stopped the problem and noticing I was still standing stupidly in front of his desk, too stunned and confused to move back to my seat waved me closer.  I leaned in over his desk and he whispered, "Don't be so shocked!  They're college kids, they act stupid."  Chuckling as an afterthought, he added, "It could be worse. At least they aren't cheating!" 


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Again, thanks for reading!
Brian, the Author Guy