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

Yesterday I assisted David in the practical exam for the first two mechanics lab classes.

First I typed the rules for the exam, which I posted outside of the laboratory. I requested that students prepare a half sheet of paper for the teacher’s comments, and to place their name along one of the ten-minute schedules for the next two hours. There were two names available for each ten-minute slot, because either the student would be having his or her exam with David or with me.

The instructions also said that the student was to pick a number from a box, which corresponds to one of the seven performed experiments. They have to know the title of the experiment from the number, not as given in the manual or in the syllabus, but in the order that we performed them.

When they get the title of the experiment correctly (I give them two incorrect guesses before I tell them the correct title), then they have to approach the correct table which contains the materials used in that experiment. Again for this I give them two wrong guesses before I tell them the correct table to go to.

Of course, each wrong guess already means a deduction. It was also written in the procedure that they start out with seven points (one third of the twenty point perfect score). Every incorrect statement they give is equivalent to one point subtracted, and each correct statement they make is equivalent to one point added. This was actually changed from the original half-point system I had proposed to David earlier.

Not surprisingly, the students filled up the later slots first, and even complained that there should be slots for up to the third hour of the classes, when there were more than enough slots for their class during the first two hours. There were actually four students from the Friday class who also wanted to take their practical exam that day, and they even submitted a formal request letter to David.

Unfortunately, we had to delay the start of the exam by more than 30 minutes because I accidentally locked the lab room with the keys inside and the master key was with the head of security, who also drove the shuttle to the highway, so we waited for him to come back.

15 minutes after the shuttle was supposed to return but didn’t (the guard told me the shuttle may have been brought to the auto mechanic after some engine trouble earlier in the day), I went to the administration office to ask for their copy of the master key instead.

The delay, plus the fact that we did not have any timer to accurately measure the time of start and finish for each exam, probably contributed to the fact that it was less than fifteen minutes before the 2 pm class started when we finished.

I just had enough time to grab a quick lunch at the cafeteria before we made an impromptu sign up sheet for the second class and start at ten minutes past two. Fortunately there were only 16 students for this class, which meant that we finished by half past three.

We left the materials on the tables in the room for tomorrow, instead of setting it up again for just one class, and just asked the janitors to please not clean the room until Friday afternoon.