Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

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

On the first day of the sixth week of classes, I had my mechanics lab class in the morning.

Their experiment was Composition of Concurrent Forces. Those who were early enough to take the quiz, unfortunately, were not able to answer much because their lab manuals were with those who arrived late.

I would not be surprised if part of the reason why they were late was because they were finishing up what they had to submit IN THE PREVIOUS WEEK in their group notebooks.

I told everyone that because technically five schooldays had passed since they were supposed to have submitted that, they could only get a maximum of fifty percent in those two group reports due in the last week. That’s ten percent deduction per day, not including Saturday, which I waived off since they didn’t have any classes on that day.

I also gave them a short demonstration at the start of the experiment, after everyone had already borrowed their equipment, especially the part about using the bubble level, adjusting the screws on the bottom of the three legs of the force table and not moving it from that position for the entirety of the experiment to minimize errors from the unevenness of the table.

There was also one girl who was complaining that her group mates are always late. In fact, they have now incurred a total of two absences because of that. They have never been able to reach the class on time for the quiz, which, as we agreed at the start of the term, is our definition for someone who is not late.

The problem with this is that if I move her to one of the other groups, it means I would have to adjust the other groups for the leader and secretary assignments. I don’t want to do that anymore. So everyone will have to bear with the decisions they made at the start of the term.

That day was also the start of the peer evaluation sessions, which I knew because I was asked to sit in on two of my co-teachers’ classes also.

This meant that I would have to postpone the exam for that afternoon in the mechanics lecture session.

But I made it look like it was the students’ decision by giving them two options: exam that afternoon that did not include the third scenario of freefall, or more examples of constant acceleration that afternoon and exam the next meeting that included the third scenario of freefall. According to their voting, they chose the second, since it gave them more time to study.

Session 813 has decided to take the exam during the next meeting. Class dismissed.