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

From the discussion on academic advising during the faculty meeting last Wednesday, for the advisers, it was cleared up about to allow the students to enroll in given the co-requisite and pre-requisite status of the mechanics lecture and lab classes, and the post-requisites: electricity. It seems that some of the teachers not familiar with how the system science subjects are graded (and even those from the College of Computer Science). For the programming subjects, it seems, even though the lecture and lab components have different teachers, the students only receive one grade, which is proportionally divided between the two (not necessarily fifty-fifty).

Some of the teachers are a little confused with what happens if a student passes either the lecture or lab subject and fails the other, which is possible, and HAS happened. Passing only the lecture means being allowed to take the post-requisite (although not strictly recommended), but passing only the lab does not.

There were those who suggested that to be allowed to take both of the post-requisite subjects simultaneously, a student must pass both pre-requisite subjects, since the lab was supposed to supplement the lecture.

I told them of the case of the Math majors, who, since the math department only allowed one subject of lab but two subjects of lecture, take their first lecture subject (on mechanics) with no lecture, then on the succeeding term take the second lecture subject (on electricity) with the accompanying lab subject that had experiments in both mechanics and electricity. This gave the precedent that it’s okay for the lecture subject to be taken ahead of - instead of strictly simultaneous to – the lab subject.

Yesterday was the second computer lab session for my Trig class because of the new lesson on graphing. This time I assumed that everyone already knew how to make the charts from the columns of data, so we went ahead with graphing of equations of the form (a * sin (b * x + c )) + d, and how changing any of these four constants affects the graph’s amplitude, period, minimum and maximum.

This time they had to submit their answers at the end of the period, which doubles as their attendance. Next meeting (still to be held in the computer lab) we will be looking at the properties of the sum and differences of trigonometric functions, as well as those of sums and differences of two or more angles (which requires 3D graphing), if there is time.

I also got another text message from the students in Computer Science making astronomy software. They asked when I could be free for another consultation.

I told them that I would be busy for the next two weeks (what with the Open Campus and my class field trip to worry about) so I couldn’t give them an exact date when I could meet with them. In the meantime, I said, they could get advice from some other faculty also versed in astronomy, whose names I mentioned (not for the first time).

I got a reply from them saying they would rather wait when I am free to look at their work so far. Okay, I'll let them know when I'll be available then.

Lastly, I didn’t realize until now that two days and one year ago was when I mentioned taking the first step towards being where I am now. That is, passing my resume. The difference a year makes, indeed.