In the last regular meeting of my general science requirement mechanics laboratory for the entire term, we had their practical exam.

It was only a few minutes before the start of the meeting that the students found out that they would have to memorize the experiment titles and the order of the experiments because I only wrote the numbers of the experiments on the papers they were going to draw.

I also got a little softhearted with some of the more diligent students who I knew never had an absence unless they could help it (like right after the Holy Mountain trip that I was also on) to give them questions that they could answer to boost their grade, although I did not deduct those points from them because I technically asked them to guess – and they had the option not to answer if they did not want to.

Unfortunately even though I told them to keep quiet to the others about the bonus, it still leaked – or the desperate students heard that it had been suggested before the exam started – for them to get bonus points for identifying all of the experiments.

I only asked the experiments to be identified though when the student could not identify the experiment immediately and so I suggest that they eliminate those experiments that they do remember.

This did not stop some of the students from bargaining though, after they had decided to end the exam or when the time ran out, when they saw that their score was low. As some of my co-teachers had often intoned, if they had just put the same amount of effort in their bargaining as with their studies, they would not have to worry in the first place.

I also cut down the number of points to be given to identifying the equipment that was already there laid out in front of them, such as the weights and the meter stick, even the tape used!

But it was satisfying to see some of the slacking students struggling to perform the experiment when I asked them to demonstrate it (since I doubted if they could spout the theory or formulas used) and they struggled. They shouldn’t expect to pass then.

Session 1071 struggled too. Class dismissed.