POV

A Knights son.

Today was the day of the imperial examinations. There are a lot of new positions due to the conquest of Galicia. They need a lot of new bureaucrats and teachers to fill the positons left behind by the purged bureaucrats. As I was reviewing the material for exams, I saw my friend Paul coming to meet me. He was aiming for a urban bureaucratic finance position while I was aiming to be a teacher.

"How confident are you in getting the teachers position."

"I am pretty confident as there are many positons but there are not many people applying to be teachers. I am pretty much guaranteed to get the position as long as I pass the exam. What about you."

There are not many commoners participating as they are not as liteterate as the nobles. The compulsory education has just set in and there are not many people graduating who are eligible to participate in these exams and due to that most of the nobles are monopolizing bureaucratic positons. It probably won't last for long as compulsory education will give the government access to a greater talent pool. Anyway, as long as I get into a positon now I will be basically set for life.

"As you probably know, there is a lot of competition for this postion so I have to study hard. I am wondering why you wanted to become a teacher, if you wanted to you could easily get into most positions using your intelligence." He asked in a questioning manner.

As I was about to answer him, the time for the examinations started. We parted ways and I went to the examination hall to start the exam. The examination hall wasn't anything fancy, it was in the town square as there wasn't enough accomadations to fit everyone, or so I heard. There were not a lot of students aiming to become teacher so the standard was quite low. As I was taking the exam, I saw the examiners passing from near me. All the examiners were former soldiers. They were probably brought to intimidate us and stop us from cheating. The exam was quite easy as they mainly focused on topics such as history, language, maths and science all of which are the subjects taught in school.

There were also some questions that looked like history questions but were probably tests of loyalty to the king. You can't really see them unless you look real closely. Well, who am I to question what kind of questions they are asking. After the test was over and the examiner took all of our answer sheets, I met my friend again and he looked really tense as the test was probably hard.

"The questions on the test are really hard. They were asking questions about history and science. I don't know why they are asking us that as it is not important for the postition I am going for. I might not be able to get into the positon." He said with a sigh.

I comforted him for a while and then we went out to get some food.