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

Yesterday there was a voters' education seminar, which was announced to all of the nearby public schools, and neighboring residential areas. In fact, the day before, Maila, Ronnie and I stayed until around 6pm in school with about a dozen students just getting the materials for the seminar ready, such as the souvenir bookmarks, informative CDs, certificates of appreciation for the speakers and the papers for the mock election.

What I didn't know, despite all that time with them, was that the seminar was at the same time as the week's last mechanics lab experiment with David. That's why at the start, we only had six students in the lab (including my cousin - enough for two groups), which slowly grew to twelve, one group having all five of its original members, the other group being a composite of three, two and two members from their original groups.

The two pairs, in fact, could have started a new set up of their own, but in the end David just allowed them to have the same measurements and data, as long as the computations and answers to questions are independent.

The students who were helping out at the seminar, though, were just four. And they only thought of giving us a letter of excuse when we asked for one, after the class had already started. Before that, even Maila thought just mentioning it to us would suffice.

Now they have to make up for that experiment on Wednesday, while the other sections have a lab session. Yes, it's additional work for us, but at least David does not allow them to perform the experiment on other times that would take a three-hour chunk out of our schedule.

In the afternoon there was academic advising again, this time for the engineering majors. Those taking up computer engineering (at least forty percent of them), who I was advising, brought up their apprehension of wanting to shift to Electronics and Communications Engineering, who David was advising.

I advised them to hold of their decision for at least one more term while they gather more information as to which is the better course. After all, at least for the first term, they still share the same subjects with the rest of the engineering students.

It turned out though that only half of the students David was supposed to advise showed up at the allotted time. After he left, a third of the students showed up in the faculty room, and I had to complete their pre-enrollment approval form for them.

By then I had become more familiar with their flowcharts, knowing that they need to have finished Integrated Calculus to take up three of their regular classes for next term: STATPRO, MECHONE and DIFEQUA.

For these students, who fell below the twelve unit minimum, I then recommended either to take up their PE 3 and PE 4 simultaneously (something I had heard Miss Lissa approving) or for them to take up the BIOCHEM lecture and lab subjects (5 units total) that is offered to the CS, BA and IM students, but they are supposed to take up in the second term anyway, without any prerequisites.

These engineering students, by the way, are the only ones who are required to take the post-requisite of my mechanics subject, which is now electricity and magnetism. So I know they will be my students for next term.

They are also taking up ENGCADD, technically an elective (the third one they are taking), which, even though it is not specifically stated in the flowchart, is a direct continuation of the GRAPTWO subject I taught last term.

Chances are, I will be teaching that one, as well as the new batch taking up GRAPONE, both using the Bentley Microstation.