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

From the faculty meeting we had last Monday it was announced that besides having no classes this (Wednesday) afternoon due to the opening ceremonies of the College Sports Fest, that there would also be no classes tomorrow (Thursday) morning.

This may be due to the fact that when the same event was held last year – also on a Wednesday, the competition was so strenuous that some teachers and students were absent the next day. Of course that could also be because there was a water balloon war and a paper boat race involved, which are conspicuously (at least for the upperclassmen) not in the list of games this year.

But considering that there are also no classes on Monday and Tuesday (November 1 and 2), they could have afforded to move the opening ceremonies to Friday, when everyone would have four days to recuperate.

As it is, we have two half days off, followed by a day and a half of classes and four days of vacation.

Given that already some of the teachers are postponing their classes from 11am onwards because of the lackluster response from the students (agreeing instead that the session be made up on some other day) what more on Thursday afternoon and the last day before the return to classes on Wednesday next week?

Another consequence of the Thursday morning classes being called off is that we now have to move our Trigonometric Applications class fifty-point quiz to next week. This means that the hundred-point exam would now be moved to the week after that, just so we could return to our originally set schedule.

This was what was decided instead of the alternative, which was skipping the fifty-point quiz altogether and just having a hundred-point exam on Thursday and Friday next week with the coverage as being twice as much as what was originally announced for the quiz.

At least I’ve already covered all the topics that are not only part of the quiz but also part of the exam (including conversion of expressions to one trigonometric function and proving of equations involving several trigonometric functions).

But returning to my discussion of the quiz in mechanics last Thursday. I came to the conclusion about the reference sheet not having the effect I planned when there were still people asking me during the test which was the initial velocity and such.

Maybe I’ll have another session in the near future where all they have to do is identify the given quantities based on certain keywords in the description of the problem. I could have another session after that where all the quantities with the variables are already given, so that the students can concentrate on honing their skill in manipulating the required formulas.

Lastly for that mechanics session, the one of the personnel from the Registrar’s office was supposed to drop by at the end of the period to give the students the form for teacher evaluation. For this reason even though there were already students who finished their test early (or gave up early) I had to request them to stay instead of leaving the room.

The fact that the personnel still had not showed up at five minutes before the end of my session added to my annoyance from the morning and the day before.

Finally I had to ask the students to pass their papers because the personnel from media services were already outside to set up the LCD projector for the succeeding class, as well as the students from the same class.

I’ll talk about when I finally was evaluated by the students (and in what subject) next time, and the Mathematical Methods 1 quiz last Friday plus the Monday to Wednesday classes. Class dismissed.