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

Again, reporting on my classes a day late.

Yesterday all I did was giving out the exam I had sufficiently prepared by Thursday. It went swimmingly well – and fast, because it was all letters anyway. The first part had 35 questions whose answers could all be chosen from a list of 23 constellations. No more spelling errors to mull over.

What surprised me was that despite the fact that this had been the way the questions of the constellations were formulated in the first long exam, I still entered the classroom to people asking me if a particular star’s name ended in an “L” or an “R”. The fact that I answered their questions without hesitation should have been an indication that there would be no such items in the test.

Also, for the second time in as many terms that I have given this type of test, I had to explain to them that in the enumeration portion, they did not have to give the names of the constellations, just the letters. I guess it doesn’t hurt next time for the instructions to be condescending to the intelligence of most. And to make the blank spaces shorter still.

The second part was fifteen questions on the celestial coordinate systems, to be chosen from six possible answers this time. The sequence of answers reminded me of my elementary music classes. “A, E, D, D, C, E, F, C…” except there was not G, and, none of the questions had B as an answer.

As an afterthought, since there was extra space at the bottom of the second page in my one-sheet exam and I did not include any question in the first part that dealt with this, I told them they could list down the twenty brightest stars as a bonus. Again, astonishingly, this needed further clarification. They thought they had to write them in order, and assumed I would stop checking at the first blank. I told them they could skip, and had to give them the example that if they only wrote down number 1 and number 20, they would get points for that. If they could only remember the fifth to the tenth, they would get points for that also. I will only be giving each correct answer here half a point though, so as to keep the bonus down to one tenth of the total score.

I also seem to have neglected to mention last time that this is the first exam that I have had photo stenciled, at the recommendation of one of the senior faculty members here when I asked her if I should mimeograph or photocopy a hundred ten copies of two pages. I could make a copy of the exam without having to rely on a dot matrix printer, and the reproductions were clear, even the superscripts that have been giving my co-teachers headaches on their problem solving tests. And there were no messy stencils to store afterwards.

Just two hitches: in my 920am and 1250pm classes, because some students finished and handed in their papers after only twenty minutes, there were two students I did not allow to take the test anymore. For the first time ever, I told them to write me a letter explaining why they were late, and have it noted by the vice dean of their college. Then I’ll consider it. I could give them a new, more difficult exam, or I could just remove it from their accumulation altogether. Depending on their performance in the previous and succeeding requirements, and their present class standing, one or the other would be beneficial for them. The first option, though, would be more disadvantageous to more students.