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.

Yesterday I passed the request for splitting of my two general science requirement mechanics lab classes into three to the dean’s office. After it gets noted, then I will give it to the registrar’s office. The new schedules are effective Monday next week.

I also told the registrar’s office about a student of mine who I advised (he is taking up engineering) to take up the subject, is enrolled, is in the class lists, has been seen around the school, but has not been attending, not even the other lecture class.

I informed them that the student should be automatically dropped, but sometime in the last three years it seems they have stopped that policy for the students who incur excessive absences in the first four weeks of classes.

The registrar’s personnel informed me that the student will just be given an automatic grade of zero at the end of the term, so it will still reflect in his transcript.

It may sound unfair to the student, but it is their responsibility after all. Besides, if they want to appeal the decision and ask that the subject not be included in the transcript, they can send a formal letter stating why the student didn’t attend in the first place. I don’t think they could plead not knowing it was enrolled.

Anyway, going back to my lab class, the last session we had on graphs and equations was their last as one big happy group of eight members each. It really was getting obvious they were relying of a few key people in their group to work on the day’s activity, while the others were just horsing around.

With their group numbers halved during their first experiment next week, hopefully that attitude will change.

I didn’t inform the class about the split at the start, by the way, but they learned by themselves from the lab report and leader/secretary assignments that was posted at the back of the lab (and outside the faculty room).

Some didn’t get what it meant immediately, but just said they were mistakenly put in a different schedule. They didn’t notice the names of their group members were the same (as much as possible I retained the original groupings).

No one complained though, with some even happy since the original schedule was their only class for that day. Others mourned the loss of allowance for that day.

Session 1503 will have to take the wheel on experiment performance next week. Class dismissed.