The Mome Raths Outgrabe

I've forgotten exactly how Humpty-Dumpty defined the words mome, raths and outgrabe, if indeed he did. But I do know that, had Lewis Carroll been a part of our week so far, he would have compared the experience to being bitten by the frumious Bandersnatch and clawed by the Jubjub bird, before falling afoul of the Jabberwock.

The week began with a Monday; need I say more? And this was a Monday that followed a weekend that was, for all practical purposes, nonexistent; furthermore, it ended with an Operations Management quiz. The thing about OM quizzes is that you're never quite sure to do with the preparation time. You think you know things. Two minutes before the TA starts handing out the paper, you stop thinking and start hoping you know things.

Then, of course, all illusions end.

Our HR project presentation was scheduled for Wednesday, which naturally put paid to all thoughts of sleep on Tuesday. And then there was the fact that we had been under the impression that the presentation would be next week... Anyway, we sat up till the wee hours of Wednesday morning, reducing twenty-page articles to twenty words to go on a powerpoint slide, and not preparing for the quiz we knew we would have.

I would feel slightly less aggrieved about that, and about the grade that I know will be on that quiz paper, if we had actually been called to present on Wednesday.

Wednesday's quiz... I'm not going to pretend I would have aced it under other circumstances, but I might have done marginally better - written in at least one correct entry - if our professor had not kept us in twenty minutes past time, giving us a recap of revenue recognition. (To add insult to inury, I thought that meant the quiz would have at least one question on revenue recognition, which it did not, and spent precious pre-quiz preparation time revising it.)

Today, though, was the icing on the cake. At 1240 hours, we were sure we would have an IC quiz at 2:30 pm. At 1325 hours, one of the TAs told us we had a quiz in Individual Dynamics at 2:00 pm. Since it was the first ID quiz (with ten days to go for the term), and since "Quizzes and Assignments" are worth 20% of our grade for the course, we were understandably alarmed, and we bolted.

At 1330 hours, we came to a screeching halt in front of a Quiz Notice Board that was... empty. There we were, ready to glower hatefully at the slip of paper announcing our doom, and there was the Notice Board, smug, omniscient, and irrefutably vacant.

"Nope," said we. "That can't be. We know we have a quiz. Ergo, the Notice Board must be wrong."

Never believe that. The Notice Board is always right, and we didn't have a quiz. But it was still five minutes of unnecessary tension followed by ten minutes of agonizing uncertainty. People who skipped lunch and ran straight to their rooms to mug might take a sterner view of the situation, but now I think it was all a bit funny. And I ask myself, what does the PGP system gain - other than seeing a classroom empty itself out in fifteen seconds, which is hardly an event worthy of the Olympic games - by making us think there's going to be a quiz when there isn't?

Will would put it down to Ariel - or possibly Puck. But to add Puck to the mix is not comforting.