A somewhat disheartening discovery

I finally turned in the exam sets to the appropriate administrative branch of this fine university for purposes of archiving and distribution. I'd even taken the effort to make the necessary (and then some) copies so as to avoid any Xerox-related mishaps. Until the moment I rolled into the office which on a bi-annual basis is inhabited by senior citizens, mostly retired school teachers, to turn in the exam sets, all was well. I entered the offices, and while I was waiting for the elderly lady in charge to finish whatever she needed to do in order to accept the exam sets from the person in front of me, I had ample opportunity to take in the room and the adjoining facilities. Obviously, the room had been upgraded to include the most up-to-date technology which realistically could be handled by the current residents. Which is another way of saying that the office was equipped with yellow post-it's, a radio and a telephone.

From the moment I handed over the exam sets, there was trouble. First, it was the problem of finding the course code in her single-page ledger of all the courses holding exams that day. Then there was the problem of comprehending the fact that I'd already taken the trouble of copying the problem sets, and theat the number of copies exceeded the number of students taking the course so that there would be some to spare. Subsequently, there was the language issue, mostly due to the fact that there was one set of exams in English, and then one set in Norwegian (where I'd taken the liberty of solving the bokmål/nynorsk issue by using the header Oppgave/Oppgåve X for all the problems). Having resolved these issues to her satisfaction, the retiree discovered that each exam set contained three pages of text distributed on two sheets of paper. In other words; I'd used a two-sided copy in order to save some paper. "Oh no; this was bad - they don't like that at all.." In this context, "They" presumably meant some higher-ups on the administrative totem pole....there were all kinds of problems associated with the double-sided copy. First of all, she claimed that she'd never seen anything like this (i.e. three pages distributed on two sheets of paper), and she had to make all kinds of cryptic markings and probably even make a phone call to the higher-ups to warn them of this unspeakable scenario, so that they could brace themselves for this complicated case and make new copies onto three separate sheets if need be.

That was bad enough, but the worst part came when the old lady started giving me some evidence-based reasons for two-sided copies being less than optimal. As it turns out, every time someone's used two-sided copies, many students have failed to realize that there was text on both sides of the sheet(s), resulting in problems not answered, bad grades, complaints, committees and other evils which at the end of the day end up as extra work for the subject teacher.

As Sondre pointed out to me; wasn't this the basis for a Mr. Bean episode? Seriously; if there are two sheets, of which the first has text on both sides, and the students fail to notice that fact and consequently fail, that's natural selection. I don't care how nervous they are; if they solve "Problem 1" and then proceed to "Problem 3", "Problem 4" and so on without realizing that something is missing, then their subsequent failure is inevitable. What would be the logic behind failing to check the other side? Is the assumption that I'm a moron who can't count, and it's a lucky coincidence that this year's exam has fewer problems than the previous ones?

Nothing like surrounding yourself with the best and the brightest.....