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

Yesterday David was asked to present a small robotics exhibit during one of the career orientation (a.k.a. recruitment) days of one of the local high schools. Okay, it wasn't so nearby, it was two towns away.

But the thing was, it would take all day and that means I would have to handle the two lab sessions all by myself.

The first lab session was a real challenge. It had four groups, some of the rowdiest students I've had this term (who were usually absent, but as luck would have it, showed up in full force), and two more groups were going to perform the same experiment from last week.

The first additional group were the four students who helped out in the voter's education seminar last Friday. The second additional group were present last Friday, but it seems they were asked by David to repeat their experiment.

I wouldn't believe them at first, until they texted one of the students who was helping out David with the exhibit, because I wouldn't give them David's number.

This was the first of several things for which the students had to ask permission from David while he was away. I would have allowed them to do those things, but I wanted them to put out effort for the consideration they were asking.

There were also two students (cousins or siblings) who wanted to perform the experiment during the morning class rather than the afternoon class. One group from the afternoon, after I had returned their graded group reports from last week (the manuals) also asked to be allowed to resubmit their data tables from the conservation of mechanical energy experiment when they filled half the columns based on an incorrect starting equation.

Of course, I had to believe the student who's phone we were sending to, because he always replied, "Sir David says it's okay."

My cousin, by the way, was the second student who accompanied David (and Sir Joel from the School of Business and Miss Karen from the Registrars) in the whole day promotion of the school.

And the experiment for this week is Torque and Rotation, not just because of the inappropriately titled movie that came out recently, but because it is one of the more impressive equipment sets that we have.

Surprisingly, both classes finished their experiments earlier than usual. I don't know if it was just me, the nature of the experiment (despite the fact that unlike the earlier experiments, this topic had no previous introduction in the lecture class), some unknown factor, or a combination of the above.

I didn't even have to announce that they could be done in an hour's time.

What they don't know, though, is that this is the last experiment. I told David that it would be best to announce that tomorrow after the last class. We will have to announce that the practical exam will be next week, and I don't know what David plans to do with the students who are assigned to submit the individual report for the eighth and last experiment.

The term is winding down fast.