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.

It's true what they say: disasters do sell newspapers. No matter how much I want to balance positive and negative writing here, it gets tedious always dealing platitudes about good students (as if there are that many to begin with - which there are not) that they don't get to read in the first place, and everything else considered "not bad" that I post is indifferent - probably more to the potential reader/s than to the writer.

What I'm trying to say is that I have to go with another rant today.

I have a new student who is an Ephraim in the making. I knew him before from introduction to robotics, for which I passed him then because his group did okay on the projects, and there really wasn't that much point in failing a student on a floating elective.

During the wedding of one of our graduates I went to though, his "friends" were backbiting him, thankful that he didn't attend.

And being in a panel of data management projects at the end of last term, his group started their defense without him, and he failed that subject.

Now he's my student in two subjects, and he only started attending now, in the middle of the second week. His absences will be counted against him though, because he was in the class list from the start. And his late attendance is the reason why I wasn't able to move the subject in consideration to at least three people who wanted to take the class last week.

Asking the teacher in data management about his performance, she said there was a lot of "sadness" in his "life", which was regrettable since he is "smart". That's a warning flag for me though, invoking pity.

And on the first lab session, he asked for dispensation immediately to switch lab report assignments with another student because he would be absent next week. I didn't allow it, saying he had to learn the experiment anyway for the practical exam.

But I think he was just testing the waters if I would be strict or now. Now he knows.

Session 1983 can either wallow in misery or strive in lessons, but not both. Class dismissed.