It’s different for different people but with my access arrangements I received 25% extra time and leaf green paper across all of my subjects and in all seven of my exams. Leading up to exams I had to make sure that all my arrangements were in place as my college was pretty useless with organisation so I needed to make sure that everything would be ready. When doing exam prep classes where my teachers would tell us how long we needed to spend on questions before moving on to be done in time I had to work out my timings separately to make sure I knew how long I needed on each section. Neither of these are really drastic just small inconveniences that I noticed other people didn’t have to worry about leading up to exams.
During the actual exams my exam papers are bright green which stands out in the exam hall making it super easy for me to find me seat among the hundreds of others which is always a plus. My exam papers are photocopied onto the green paper instead of being printed like that sent from the exam board and a lot of the time the lines on my answer sheet don’t transfer very well and I have no lines to write on as well as the boxes I need to fill in with my candidate information. So I have to guess where all the boxes are and hope for the best because otherwise the invigilator may not know who’s paper it is an refuse to mark it. So that’s always fun and something I’d rather not have to worry about come results day.
With my 25% extra time I stay sat down when everyone on my exam series leaves which gets me wired looks from classmates that don’t know why I’m not leaving with them too. As long as it’s during my extra time I can leave when I’ve finished my paper after letting the invigilator know that I don’t want to use the rest of my time. This leads to a 5 minute whisper conversation with the invigilator asking me am I sure over and over and am I sure that I checked over my work and answered all the questions as though I’m not capable of knowing when I’m finished.
Dealing with other classmates is probably the worst part of it all. Not only is it the wired looks from the people sat around me when I sit down with my green paper and when I get extra time but its all the questions before and after exams. People like to know what’s going on and why I’m different to them but it gets annoying after while of answering questions like ‘why do you need green?’ ‘why do you get extra time?’. Maybe the worst part though is the assumption that I only do well in tests and exams is because I have extra time and my exams are ‘easier’ then theirs because of it which isn’t the case at all I take the same standardized test as everyone else and have to write the same amount of essays as them. The only reason that I get extra time is because it can take me a while to process the information and to think about my response.
They’re all pretty small things and probably seem irrelevant but when they add up during an already stressful time it's not fun for me at all and kinda puts me on edge more. But it’s done now and I don’t have to worry about any of that anymore.
This post is part of my ‘the truth’ series and the third part of my ‘exam season’ mini series so be sure to check them out through the tags on my blog. Want to learn more about my dyslexia? Check out my ‘I’m dyslexic' blog post here.