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

On the fifth I had a quiz in Trig and we started on Chapter 3 in mechanics. In the Trig test I realized too late that I didn’t have enough test booklets or questionnaires.

I only had 13 booklets, so I told the last two students to arrive to use either their own paper or buy a test booklet from the bookstore.

I printed out 15 copies of the questionnaire, but I ran out even though there was at least one more student who didn’t show up. I already prepared a note for the student to give to the secretary in case he showed up, but he didn’t. The note was for the secretary to print a copy of my exam from one of the computers in the faculty room and for her to bring the paper to the classroom herself, which, luckily, is only halfway along the hall on the same floor.

As expected, the same students who finished first did so here, although when I checked their papers yesterday (less papers to check than mechanics, too), at least they scored higher in this test than in mechanics (although still low). I guess the stigma from the reputation of the course I graduated from is worse than just mathematics. Whether that reputation is deserved or not depends on the teacher I still say.

I was also surprised about how long those who I considered as the bright students took to finish. I thought they’d pass their papers within the first thirty minutes, something I have been used to seeing from students in my astronomy classes. Either they found the questions that difficult (something I’m considering, as no one got over 38 points out of 50), or they are just that thorough.

Another thing that astonishes me is seeing the poor performance of students that I have talked to and considered sharp before they were part of my class. This, more than anything, brings home to me the difference between social intelligence and abstract (or logical) intelligence. Not that it makes me like them any less; I just wish that kind of skill were translatable.

In my mechanics classes some students attended the 1pm class because they wanted to spend as much time as possible answering the homework. Because of this and some other obscure reason there were less than 20 students that attended my 1120am class.

I distributed their papers, told them the most common mistakes I encountered, which is mostly using the incorrectly equations for constant velocity that are meant for constant acceleration.

I actually finished Chapter 3 that session (it was all about the mathematical definition of force, weight and Newton’s Three Laws of Motion), and I joked with them that since I promised their long exam (100 points) will be after the third chapter is finished, we should have that next meeting. Of course there were protests, and although it’s a bigger coverage for them to study on, the long exam will be after the fourth chapter.

Since the examples we discussed also focused on concepts from the first two chapters, I also made it into board work for the parts they were already familiar with, and I told them (for one time only) that the recitation score will be added to their quiz. Not for the second class though, where more students attended, although my cousin could have used it; he only got 56%, and asked me for help afterwards.