Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

My last lab class had their last experiment for the term today. One thing I learned from last Tuesday is that despite how good their equipment are, their procedures still needed dumbing down. No offense, but there’s no such thing as underestimating the students’ intelligence. I also told the students to just submit their measurements and observations and just follow up with the calculations tomorrow.

Because of the Wednesday holiday next week being moved to Monday, all the Monday exams have been moved to Wednesday. My lab exam is on Tuesday. I was planning to make the exam on Monday. Now I have to make it tomorrow and on Saturday. And it doesn’t make it easier that I’m forced to go to a wake in Sta. Rosa, Laguna at 5am that day, and have to come back in the afternoon.

There are also these students who want to be exempted from finals in lab. I told them to give all their requirements early, as in tomorrow, so that I can grade them, and in the afternoon I’ll tell them if their pre-final grade is enough to be exempted.
I also told them to give me a letter with their request so that it’ll all be aboveboard. Of course, there’s always the possibility that their grade is not enough for them to be exempted. But they want to take that chance.

Speaking of letters of request, there have been several times in the term when I have asked students to give me one to let them take the exam after arriving late or to make up an experiment. This, I told them, was to make their scores valid. No letter, no score. But in the letter, they wrote “thank you for letting me take the exam/make up the experiment” when it was supposed to be a letter of request.

That’s why they’re students, they still have a lot to learn.