Graded the first physics midterm of the semester today. Not that bad...I purposely made it easy to see how many people were really understanding stuff. Lots of A's, and those scores that weren't A's were low. Hmm...have to figure out how to address that.

The first astronomy midterms of this semester are coming up this week. I precipitated an incident in class a few days ago when I reminded the students of this. One young woman asked if I held a review in class, to which I responded, "No." Then she asked if I handed out a review sheet, to which I responded, "If you've been attending class, then your notes ARE your review sheet." At which point she wailed, "But we've covered so much!" The class laughed, and I started lecturing. The start of lecture is always a brief review of the previous meeting's topics. As I quickly went over the old material, I could see her scribbling furiously and then she shrieked, "Slow down!"

I think of her as "Shrieker" now.

But this was not the last of my interactions with Shrieker. At the next class meeting, I discussed important telescopes and why we want large telescopes preferably in space. To illustrate my point, I showed the Hubble Deep Field image. It shows 3 stars from our own Galaxy and thousands of other galaxies in a region of Ursa Major which is completely black to the naked eye. After class, she came up to me to clarify what a galaxy is. When she realized how many stars like the Sun there are and the possibility for planets around them, she stammered, "But religion, it says...I mean...we're not...all those stars...I can't handle it. I'm glad you're not testing me on this!"

Anxiety and a religious crisis. Damn, I'm good.