The girl who wrote TESTES

One of the more delightful traditions that exists in my school is the post-exam ritual of group paper checking. Much like how national board exams are reviewed, teachers of the same subject gather around steaming cups of tea and stacks of scripts, collectively grading and occasionally discovering little treasures hidden in students’ responses.

Last year, I found myself in the science group, being a Physics teacher by profession. But this year, fate (and my Social Studies timetable) landed me among the historians and geographers. At first, it felt like I had accidentally walked into the wrong movie. Me – a science teacher –  correcting papers about Adolf Hitler and rice farming in Pakistan? It was ridiculous enough to make me chuckle through the first few days. But somewhere between Mesopotamia and Mount Jhomolhari, I began to feel oddly at home.

One Saturday afternoon, our group , six of us including the principal and vice-principal, had gathered to mark Class VIII Geography papers. Mr Tashi Dorji had brought tea momo and soft drinks, which kept our spirits lifted. We breezed through section A’s twenty-six papers, then pushed into the next batch with renewed energy.

As we passed around papers, Ms Neljor, who had recently joined our school, handed me a fresh pile. I was in charge of awarding marks for one-word answers and fill-in-the-blanks.

Then, I stumbled upon it.

A simple fill-in-the-blank question sat innocently on the page:
“The pH of the soil can be tested using  soil __________.”

I read the student’s answer. Blinked. Read it again.

I burst into laughter, the kind that starts in the belly and refuses to be contained. My colleagues looked at me, puzzled. Mr Tashi urged me, “Read it out loud if it’s that funny!”

So I did without any hesitation.

“The pH of the soil can be tested using… testes.” 

For a moment, there was stunned silence. And then the room erupted. Laughter bounced off the walls. Chairs rocked. Tea nearly spilled. But then, something unexpected added to the comedy.

My friend Mr Tashi, through peals of laughter, asked, “Whose paper is that? Which boy wrote this?”

Still chuckling, I turned the paper to check the name. And there it was — the writer was not a boy.

“She’s a girl,” I announced.

That only made the laughter louder. But while we were losing ourselves in the hilarity, I noticed the principal had gone very quiet, with a slightly frozen expression. Neljor, sitting beside me, was awkwardly pinching my thigh.

It turned out the girl was the principal’s niece.

After the laughter died down and cheeks were wiped, we returned to our work, but the moment lingered. Beneath the humour was a subtle reminder of the cracks in rote learning. 

The poor girl had probably heard soil “test kits” but remembered it as testes, and confidently filled it in.

That day, between momo breaks and multiple-choice questions, we were reminded: memorisation without understanding is a dangerous game. And sometimes, it leaves behind a story that we will laugh about for years.