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

Continuing my tale yesterday, as usual there were some students who were scrambling to submit their requirements in mechanics lab before the deadline at 5pm.

We passed by the cyber cafe in a nearby mini mall and there were students typing away, because it was their misfortune that the computer lab in campus was closed.

I was using one of the computers in the faculty room yesterday, and at least one student interrupted me twice so that she could check her e-mail if her sibling had sent through her e-mail the document file of one of her reports that was in their computer at home.

She downloaded it to a diskette and revised it in one of her classmates’ laptops. Unfortunately, the laptop had a virus that turned the document file into a self-replicating executable file with a different extension name.

So when she was looking for the file in the word processor software, it could not be found. When she checked in the faculty room’s computer, the anti-virus software automatically renamed the file.

Worse, she did not save the file in the laptop’s hard disk before she saved it in the diskette. This was the same student I saw in the cyber café who had been typing three pages worth already without saving her file. Good thing fortune didn’t send a power failure her way at that point.

I tried renaming the file and opening it using different text editors, but the virus had completely wiped her original content.

This was at exactly 530pm when David had said he was going to wait for another student coming over from his house to submit his requirements.

I guess she was given the leeway to submit her requirements at a later time when they talked to David at that point.

Today two students made up for their mechanics lecture finals, which they were not able to take last Monday. These students at least have valid excuse letters (a medical certificate for one: she arrived here in time for the exam, and asked for medicine from the clinic; they told her to lie down instead).

What’s worse is that there is one student in David’s class who is asking to take the lab exam tomorrow. His excuse: he’s blaming one of his classmates for telling him erroneously that the exam is tomorrow. I suggested to David that he ask the student to get a written excuse letter approved by the Dean.

There were also around 4 to 8 students in David’s class who were between 50 to 54.99 percent in his rating. He asked me what he should do with them. I told him to give them a removal exam, and they will take it tomorrow.

Tomorrow is also the deadline for their projects in the lecture class, which will be used for the lab class next term. I said I would grade their submissions on their quality and durability, as well as how usable it is. This means that if their work is flimsy and will cause more errors in application than demonstrate the needed principle, they may not get the full 20% for that.