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

One of the students who took a make up test that was actually the same as the previous test I gave them was the student who before explained while crying outside my testing room how she was left by her school service with her notes inside so she couldn’t study.

She had asked me no less than five times in different days about the coverage of the exam. Once it was at the end of a particularly trying lecture in mechanics, and even for a millisecond I couldn’t help it that the exasperation I felt shown on my face how she could ever hope to pass the subject if she couldn’t even be bothered to write down and/or remember the topic of the exam she missed.

She noticed, and even commented on how I was already angry, but that was when I reined it in, hid behind a mask of passivity and turned away instead of lashing out at her.

During the make up test itself, she could not even determine whether force was in newtons, velocity in meters per second and mass in kilograms. She had to ask me for confirmation.

I really have a notion she will be failing this course, and I cannot give her any more consideration than I have to the others.

Joseph was one of those who took the make up on tension, and he even called in his cousin when he showed up.

What he didn’t know was that during the finals, his cousin talked to me about accepting a failing grade in the course, granted that he did not turn in his test booklet anymore.

It’s sad, but I respect his decision.

Another student, the same one I failed in Trigonometric Applications last term for having a final standing of fourteen percent, yet had the supreme optimism of still asking me if he passed, asked for two make up exams, but did not show up.

Maybe I do have to warn them at the start of the course (next time?) that if they already failed one course under me before, that I will be keeping an eye out on them to improve their performance.

There was still one more mechanics exam make up, and that was a student who did not take the last hundred-pointer before the finals.

Because she is just like the others I mentioned, I will be giving her the same test to see how well she does on that. If the doesn’t get discouraged by her thirty eight percent pre-final grade, that is.

Next time I’ll talk about my finals in Electromagnetic Theory, another make up exam on the same subject by one student, the definition of make up as given by other teachers, and the Innovation Week projects that I ASSIGNED to some students to attempt to boost up their grades instead of waiting for them to volunteer. For now, class dismissed.