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

Some things I forgot to mention from the meeting last Wednesday: first, it was decided that starting next school year, the first math subject taught to the students, as well as the first two English subjects, would carry 6 hours a week instead of 3, despite there being no increase in the number of units. There is also no corresponding additional coverage of topics.

The extra hours would be used for classroom exercises. This is to ensure that the students will be very versed in the subjects by the time they finish and move on to the post-requisite subjects. Even the Trigonometry Applications was supposed to be 6 hours, but Maila said that it wouldn’t be necessary. When they looked to me for confirmation I said I would have to reserve judgment until near the end of the term to find out if the time allotted for the teaching (and absorbing) the topics is sufficient or not.

Besides the Freshman Orientation, one of the activities that the college is thinking of organizing is a pre-confirmation orientation for the parents of prospective new enrollees. According to the EVP, the number of accepted applicants so far is 140% the number of current enrollees. They are hoping for a number at least 250% the number of freshmen from last year, but they will settle for 25% more than the difference between the two figures.

Since they are looking at it realistically that not all of those applicants will confirm and enroll, that is why they are thinking of having a pre-confirmation visit for the parents.

It was also only then that I found out their policy for accepting applicants. Those with low high school grades and low entrance test results are automatically rejected. Those with high marks in both are automatically accepted. Those with high results in one and low results in the other are asked for an interview (with the dean) to gauge their potential for improving their performance if and when they enter.

About my quiz in mechanics yesterday, I had to rush it again after my Trig class. I made two sets, one for my 1120am class and another for my 1pm class, anticipating the leakage between the two classes, especially since we were using the same room for both.

There were some oversights and corrections, such as forgetting the conversion factor of some of the units, but the biggest mistakes, both in the second test, were typing “years” instead of “yards” and giving the circumference of a circle when the area was needed.

I tried to balance out the questions to be of equal difficulty for both exams, but in my opinion the second exam was relatively easier, not having to deal with light years and a four-part question on free fall like the first exam. The second exam had one problem that needed the quadratic formula though.

To prevent students from thinking that the exam for the second class is always easier (since I allow some of them to take whichever time best suits their schedule) in the next test, which will be a long exam, I plan to give what I believe is the slightly easier exam to the first class. And I will also not allow more students to take a particular exam (either the earlier or the later) than the room’s capacity. For yesterday I only brought 35 copies of the questionnaire for each class. If I had run out: sorry for them.