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

Just as bad as last week. I’m back to the situation when I talked about Wednesday on a Monday, all because of the Saturday holiday two days ago when I didn’t go to school again.

I forgot to mention that Deiv took his special exam last Tuesday afternoon, after my classes. He gave his excuse letter in the morning, which was in the first person, but was signed by his mother. I showed it to Counselor Marj, who said that even at home he’s all into experiments (and probably not much into social interaction).

We agreed on 240pm for his exam. I asked the secretary to give him the exam when he arrived, while I took a late lunch. From the cafeteria I saw him getting out of their car and into the gate. Later the secretary told me he will finish at 430pm, which means he arrived at 3pm.

She and my cousin both had to tell him to stop the exam at the time, since he wasn’t finished yet. Heck, everyone couldn’t finish it. It would be unfair to let him get an advantage over the others, especially since I’m wary of his “stomachache” in the first place after he complained about two tests in a row the meeting before that.

But back to Wednesday: following are the main points about my electricity and magnetism oral reports then.

First of all, even though the students did only hold index cards for the reports, they were still reading whole sentences off them. I could probably salute how they were able to cram all that information on those small surfaces.

Second, despite the instruction to use their own group’s data for the results, there was still one set (three of those reporting on the galvanometer experiment) who used just one basic template for their reports, down to the same typographical errors (20 Ma – that is, mega ampere – ammeter; 907-V voltmeter). The first reporter was watching when I remarked on the second reporter’s similar data. That was when he started profusely apologizing for using the second group’s report, when, with a little inquiry, he would have found out that my cousin was the one who made the written report for that experiment and could have given him a softcopy. He was the only one who did not employ index cards for his report though, so I have to balance out his minuses with that big plus.

No one deemed it important enough to make slides about their analysis and conclusions, despite being the focal feature of their report. On the other hand, everyone used slide presentation software, and they were able to successfully reserve the computer and the LCD projector (easier because it’s a Wednesday, when there are fewer classes simultaneously).

The first student who signed up to report could not open his slide presentation file. In typical non-Murphy manner they didn’t bring a back up disk, nor save a copy in the hard disk when he made the file in the computer lab (during my Graphics One session at that). I asked the next reporter to present after him, but after everyone else was done his classmates asked for him if he could still give his report that day. I said of course, because I was not grading the visual aids after all, but how well the reporter can talk about the experiment, and let him present using another student’s slides.

There were two students who, despite listing to give their reports last, still presented unfinished slide presentations. It was too bad, because one of them, on magnetic fields, gave a very good detailed step-by-step graphic account of the initial procedure. And he also entertained us by still striving to complete his report by using the writing pen feature of the presentation software. The other one was one of the two who did not give the first report on my deadline four (was it?) weeks ago.

And I’m not finished yet with this day. For last Thursday and Friday there were the last lecture sessions in electricity and magnetism and Trigonometry, and the farewell party for the two departing teachers. For today there was the electricity and magnetism lecture finals, and helping out some students in Theory of Computation with Turing Machines. Dismissed.