We don't need to STEEEENKIN' exam!

I was supposed to begin this exam at 6pm on Wednesday. This fit nicely into my grand plan to finish by 6pm on the evil V-day, gather up some friends with no romantic plans, and drink to celebrate being one third of the way through. The questions were submitted to the department admin a week in advance, along with an email (to which she responded) specifying date and time, on which she would email the questions. As 6 approached, I huddled in front of my computer obsessively clicking 'get mail', panicking. Would my reasonable, if overly broad in scale, questions have been modified to form hideous franken-questions, requiring not 5-8 pages but a complete War-and-Peace-sized novel to answer them? Would they have been shifted slightly to emphasize the things I'm less secure in my knowledge of, like the prehistory of the Levant or herding techniques in use in the Anatolian Neolithic? Or would they appear as drafted (or even, heavens, even smaller and more rational in scale, dealing with more relevant topics), meaning that I could just sit down and write the damned things without having to dive back into frantic last minute reading?

5:59. Click.

Nothing.

6:01. Click.

Nothing.

6:05. Click.

Nothing.

At this point I begin to be concerned. Our Admin is known for her thoroughness, for her complete inability to not do the job perfectly. The woman sends work related email at 8pm on a Friday night (admittedly, it's never urgent, so why she doesn't wait until business hours on Monday I'm not sure), she would never send something this important late. Perhaps I'd better call her.

Dial, ring, voicemail. Leave a message. Perhaps she's been abducted by aliens?

6:10. Click.

Nothing.

This can't be happening. She must have sent the email, maybe it's just taking time to get through the system. Type nonsense email to self and send it off, half hoping that it won't arrive so I'll have an explanation.

6:20. Click.

1 new email! From me. Email is indeed working, apparently. Maybe it's a problem on her end?

6:30. Click.

Nothing.

Send off an email to both the admin and the exam chair mentioning the fact that I haven't received the exam, so that whenever it does turn up, I will get that extra time allowed.

7:00. Click.

Nothing. (and it was amazing how, having flooded my inbox with forwards and chatty commentary all day long, my friends chose this point to stop emailing) At this point I begin to believe that I will never get these questions, that the whole thing is a big hoax, that I have in fact already washed out of grad school and this is their way of telling me. "Oh, you thought we were going to test you for candidacy? HA!! The test was the last two and a half years, and you FAILED! No exam for you, pack up and move along, you big fat failing failure."

As I cannot face this idea any longer (plus, the mental image of my chair saying the phrase 'failing failure' in his incredibly repressed British way makes me giggle, which is becoming more and more tinged with hysteria), I decide it must be a problem with her email system, and spend the next few hours trying to figure out how to convince my email program to check extra special hard. I fail to make any difference, and finally go to bed at about 4, still trying to figure out why this email out of all my emails would be the one to go missing.

After a fun-filled and only 30% coherent conversation with the very nice UPS man, I was sitting on the couch staring vacantly at the clock saying 9:15 and desperately trying to gather up the energy to go back to bed when the phone rang. It was our admin. She forgot to email my exam, very sorry, how was today as a start date?

ARGH.

Got it at noon today, meaning it will officially end at noon on the 15, but I'm hoping to finish writing the two and a half books required by the end of the day on Wednesday so I can get my 'my boyfriend is 6,000 miles away' drink on in the company of friends.

And it is kind of nice to know that even administrative goddesses make mistakes!