Odd Commentary: Pencils on Exams

I've been studying for various exams and drafting many and varied papers for the past few weeks here at the university. To help myself study, I always draw up study sheets. This helps in that it puts all the information in one place, it reiterates all the material because I have to rewrite it and, since I try to fit each topic on one sheet, it gives me a sort of mental-visual picture of the material once I sit the exam.

Now (this is where it gets weird), when I get stressed and near to tearing my hair out at the end of the semester, I'm very, shall we say, particular (some would say OCD) about how these study sheets have to work. They have to be on blank paper. No lines. Preferably computer paper. I have to print everything. There has to be lots of white space. And I have to write in pencil. Not pen. Pencil. It just has to be. If I start getting really into it, they get color coded. Color pencil (and this causes for endless sharpening; color pencils just aren't meant for note-taking for long periods of time)!

My pencil sharpener (a lovely one thanks to my friends of Pencil Revolution) has gotten a serious workout. I've worn an entire pencil down to nothingness. I've grown attached to my pencils. I have a nice neat stack of study sheets. Life is good. I can study this way.

Yesterday, during an exam, I was tempted to take it in pencil; maybe it would help the ideas flow better or something. I had some vague idea that perhaps our Prof would disapprove, so I opted for Gel Ink instead. Two classmates went the pencil route.

At the end of the exam, our Prof heartily expressed her disapproval of the pencil route. She told us that someone might erase the answers.

Erase the answers?

Has academic dishonesty gotten that bad? That someone might sneak into an office and erase someone else's exam? Or a prof could change a student's answer in order to fail them? Yikes!

I suppose pen has an element of permanency to it that a pencil doesn't it. You've laid your answers down and that's it- no changes- written in ink. But, well, a pencil taken exam has its merits. I've always found it's easier on the hand to write for a longer period of time in pencil; that's how I ended up writing the study guides in pencil in the first place, I think. Does it really matter what someone is taking their exam in anyways? I know in grading them that as long as I can read it, I don't care. Pencil makes my handwriting neater, I think (yet another reason for using it on the study guides). Shouldn't it just be our choice at this point....

Unless we live in fear of someone with a very large eraser hunting our exam down to erase both blue books into blankness...

Oh dear.