The last thing any student wants to worry about just before taking a test is how she or he is going to make her or his point. No, we don’t mean in what way said hypothetical student is going to make her or his argument. We mean how that student is supposed to sharpen her or his pencil.
As any college student knows, the final minutes leading up to a test are sacred. For some people, this is a frantic time spent skimming through all of the material they should’ve read instead of Facebook statuses the night before. For other people, this is a time meditation—a calm before the storm—used to reassure themselves that they are, in fact, “as ready as they will ever be.”
However, regardless of whether a student falls into the first or second category (or has an entirely different pre-test ritual for that matter), it seems safe to say that nobody wants to waste those last few precious moments running from classroom to classroom searching for a pencil sharpener.
Why then, we wonder, do N.C. State students frequently find themselves in this situation?
Though many classrooms come equipped with fairly modern technology, the editorial board of the Technician has noticed a general shortage of pencil sharpeners, and we are sure many students have as well.
We understand the value of machine-readable tests. Though it is easy to forget that professors have lives outside of their classrooms, we at the Technician recognize that faculty members, like students, have other obligations outside of schoolwork and might like to do more with their time at home than grade our tests. But if we are continuously required to use number-two pencils to fill out these forms, it only makes sense that the administration provides a way for us to sharpen our writing utensils.
Sure, some students may use mechanical pencils, but there are still plenty of people who prefer the good ol’ fashioned wooden pencil. On behalf of those people, we’d like to ask the administration to provide us a way to provide you with answers. Else risk having dull students.
