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

Minor Dudley and Deiv rants: I forgot to mention from our last quiz in Trigonometry that Deiv asked me if he would get more points if he listed down all the secondary identities, which he could derive from the primary ones, which were all I was asking for. I told him no.

Last Tuesday in one of our verification exercises he asked if he could proceed with it his own way, which was just to substitute one value of an angle to both sides of the equation to see if it will match. I again told him no, because one value or even five do not equivalent expressions make. He would have to show me the graphs of the expressions to convince me, which, I didn’t tell him was one of our possible future topics, if we could get use of the computer lab during class hours. This is only during Fridays though, and not Tuesdays. I still have to work it out.

Dudley approached me several times, including yesterday, about his chances of passing my subject. I kept saying there is always a chance he could pass. There was even a time he asked me if I could cancel the lowest quiz. I said it was not my policy to do that.

In the faculty room previously he wanted the exact percentage he needed to pass. I told him he will be able to compute it himself after I return their latest quiz and I give the class the formula for getting their current standing. My tone was already dismissive.

Undaunted, he continued about how he was concerned that he failed the previous quiz. I cut him off again and said it was that kind of perspective that I wanted to remove from them which was why I would not give the “passing mark” of each quiz until they asked. I reiterated for the nth time that the quizzes are totaled, so that even low scores add to their final accumulation. I also told him that was also why I was not inclined to cancel any of the quizzes, because they all contribute to the overall standing somehow.

In my Graphics One class last Wednesday I only gave them five more exercises, ending with number forty-two. This was to give the 8-11am class, which did not meet last week, a chance to catch up.

This time the other students asked the same thing Deiv did before, which was if they could already erase some of the old exercises from their submission diskette, which was already full. I told them they could delete numbers one to ten.

Deiv had another question though, which was purely speculative. In one exercise, the angle for completing an illustration of a gear was given. His question was WHAT IF the angle was not given. I just answered that his knowledge of trigonometry should be able to tell him the answer from measuring how many of the gear’s teeth he could complete in a circle, which he knows equals three hundred sixty degrees.

I have also already found three exercises that are comprehensive in using the tools from the Bentley software that the students have been introduced to. These I plan to give as their finals. At least this time, unlike two terms ago, the finals will not be an exercise they have already done in class.

Next I’ll talk about how I made the computer lab technician’s job difficult in Graphics One, as well as answering today in class the assignment I gave the electricity and magnetism lecture students last Monday. Other than that, class dismissed.