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

Today was the second to the last session on constellations with my 920am and 230pm classes. Only a handful of constellations left for them on Friday. Then I’m sure some of them will ask when we’re going to schedule the stargazing session.

Now I’m just hoping I can span the same coverage (as these two classes) on my 1250 to 220pm session on Friday.

The 230pm class of course asked again about their test results. I said I hadn’t finished checking them yet, but that my initial impression was that some did very good in the constellations part. Even if it wasn’t
qualified, they seemed satisfied with that.

When I saw that a lot of students were not following our discussion with their photocopied star maps from the printout I provided, I reminded them that during the stargazing session, they will have to identify as many stars and constellations in the practical exam bringing only their notes. That made them pay attention.

In my other class, I also told them that for the whole of next week, we would be meeting in the lecture room below the observatory, which is on the fifth floor of the engineering building. I wasn’t surprised when the first thing they asked was if there was an elevator there. There isn’t one.

I also reminded them - to their collective relief - that we were now completely done with their zodiac constellation calendar. It won’t show up anymore in the rest of the succeeding exams for the course.

In my programming class, I gave them the leap year problem as a way of utilizing nested if statements (along with the modulus operation). I also noted on the board that since this exercise was listed in their syllabus, that it is worth twice the number of points as the regular exercises. Not that this means the other cases specified in their syllabus will be tackled. After all, only the name is given in the course outline, not the specifics of the task.

This I also gave in spite of my apprehension that since it is a well-publicized problem, that the students could have already gotten the older students’ test banks.

Luckily, the internet was down in the laboratory that time, so I didn’t have to go around checking that they only had the visual basic editor open at the time, and that nobody was researching the web for the solution, or trading e-mail or instant messages with an acquaintance who is a programming whiz.

Overall, though, students submitted their disks earlier for this exercise that in the last one, showing that it’s not that difficult.

My thesis advisee also called today. He wants to schedule his thesis defense for July 18. I reminded him of the procedure, which is to submit a letter to give to his panelists telling them about his request for setting his oral presentation. He said that he’d bring the letter tomorrow for me to note. I told him that if I wasn’t here in the department, that he could leave it with the secretary.

Before he hung up, he also said that he still hadn’t accomplished the tracing of the path of the celestial bodies, and that he wanted to request the panel for that to be removed from his objectives. Make another letter for that, I said.

And on that point, I'll hang up here, too.