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

The Trigonometric Applications exam for Friday night I only started working on late in the afternoon. This is because I was incredulous that I could not find the file I used to save their last quiz, which still had some tables and symbols I would rather get from there than make again from scratch.

Two hours before the exam though I had to give in to the pressure and start from square one, or at least use only the instructions paragraph from one of my older quizzes.
Because of that, it turned out that the sample of the table that I placed in the new exam had no negative signs for two of the quadrants.

My co-teacher had to go to the room I was proctoring to point it out to me a few minutes after we had started the test.

Since I was in the “upper” bracket of the test takers, I didn’t bother anymore arranging them in alphabetical order like in the other room, where, because they were in the “failing” half of all those taking Trig App this term, their seating positions would be more suspect.

The differences from the last time we gave the departmental exam was that first, there was one less student in each room. These students may have just stopped going to class in one of the other sections (not in my class though as far as I can tell) because of how difficult they perceived the subject was.

Second is that the cut off for both classes seems to have become lower, 48 percent instead of 50% last time. That means that on the average (pun intended) their overall performance has dropped.

There also seems to be a couple of students who shifted from one room to the other because of their relatively drastic showing in the quiz in the interim. But otherwise, the same students who were in the room I proctored last time were still there.

In fact, under the belief that the room selection is still random, some students from my class begged to be in the room I was proctoring, just so that they could continue to ask me questions like they did during the other tests (and not necessarily in the same subject).

For some who I know are not abusive of my responding to their questions, yes, I am approachable. But a few reach the limit that I know they’re not thinking anymore.

Besides the ubiquitous “Sir, is how I’m answering this question correct?” there is also “What do I do next?” which obviously would not get a direct reply from me.

Several times posing the same leading inquiry though and I was already telling them that it was obvious to me that they did not answer the items in the problem set, otherwise they would not be asking that question.

It also tested my patience that despite the fact that some students who were not in my class said they would wait until my exam ended, they were just as harassing as the students in the room peeking in every once in a while saying that they were already hungry. As if I can end the test right then and there and take care of their needs.

And that’s last week. Class dismissed.