"A small coffee with cream and sugar and 2 biscuits please" I told the attendant in the service area. I still had to drive another hour before I could reach Syracuse where I needed to conduct the centralized exams. "James achayan could probably be on that service area on the other side going the other way to Albany" I thought. Joseph Kappil was scheduled to go from Syracuse to Albany to Proctor the exams there. As I made my way back to my car I began to think of the different people involved in this gala exercise :) . For the exam to begin at noon exactly in the numerous centers across North East America and Canada, so many people like me would be at this time traveling in different directions and would be at various stages of their journey. A mammoth sequence of events has been set in motion, and I am part of it!
I would normally have been at Church at this time. So many people like me have been pulled out of their comfort zones to help make this happen - the Sunday School centralized exam of the North East American Diocese of the Indian Orthodox Church -- the Great American Testing Show that unravels this time of the year! I could not even begin to think about the exhaustive planning that was needed to get all this worked out, then the meticulous execution needed to get all this actually carried out -- with so many moving parts -- (I being a literally moving part then!) -- so many people and their moods -- so many uncontrollables -- and the Almighty grace that was the real reason why all this actually just falls in place, so that everyone gets to experience the sheer joy when it actually comes to fruition.
My tryst with the process this year happened with a voice-mail from the Centralized Exam Controller over a month ago. Subsequent phone calls, emails and detailed instructions made my assignment clear to me -- about the expectation from a Proctor. My assignment ends when I mail the envelope with answer sheets back to the CEC. But the actual process, as I could imagine, would have started much earlier, and would last till much later. With having to get the syllabus materials collected and given to different people to get the exam questions prepared, to maintaining the confidentiality, to selecting exam centers and getting students ready, to selecting and getting confirmation from Proctors, to actually conducting the exams at the same time, handling all different situations that may come up with students - their pressures, tensions, disappointments, excitements; to collecting the answers, getting answers evaluated and finally publishing the results -- is a humongous task. That this has been happening so seamlessly over the past several years is a tribute to all those working tirelessly behind the scenes to get this all done. To the Metropolitan Zachariah Mar Nicholovas who oversees the whole Sunday School ministry, the Sunday School Director, the CEC and the entire team which has over the years fine tuned and perfected this process for our children -- we are all truly grateful.
Centralized examination is a tool (however imperfect) to measure the progress made by the student. A competitive and well conducted exam is paramount to the success of this process but seldom appreciated. If things go wrong, the process is vilified, but when seamless, we often forget to thank the ones who made it so.
"It is too early for that" A correctional officer who was a parent at my exam center told me when I asked him if the recent jailbreak in Upstate NY had made their job environment come under more scrutiny. He then explained to me how the particular high security prison was cold and hard to live in, which maybe why the prisoners decided to escape. My being a Proctor was allowing me to meet with wonderful people around from other places and hear different perspectives on different things. On top of that, you are the guest of honor and treated as one where you visit, what more can one ask for?!
"The Indian Orthodox Church - an overview". I saw the book sitting on the shelf among other books in the exam hall. The author's name sparked my interest more "Dr.Paulos Mar Gregorios". The first few pages convinced me this was a treasure! HG says in the preface this 1982 work was put together "hastily" and sourced from his work in German. But if in haste Thirumeni could put together this kind of work, then its no surprise that great brilliance was possible by this genius when he got more time -- I thought! I could read just the first 15 pages or so in between the Proctoring I was doing, but it already answered a few questions I had been carrying for long -- regarding our links with Persians, Syrians, East Syrian, West Syrian, the ancient Church spread across the Indian subcontinent, etc etc. After all this was the person whose is well reputed in the pan Orthodox world (among others) and whose Oriental Orthodox explanations of the Chalcedon issue has been instrumental in bringing the two groups closer to a reconciliation. So he does know a thing or two about Church history, I told myself in jest :) and I read with interest as he wrote about the development of the Patriarchate, the Catholicate, as well as the Persian Nestorianism which in the later years "could be interpreted in an Orthodox manner". A great book which I look forward to making part of my collection someday soon. My Proctoring adventure allowed me the opportunity to know of another of the little gems by the Gregory of India. thanks again for the opportunity!
