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.

The school is having another field trip to the last island bastion of freedom against the Japanese invaders in World War II this Sunday.

The teacher in charge, who was cautioned last time by the Executive Vice President against repeating her only overnight field trip, doesn’t want to tempt fate and set another two day tour with her students just in case the vice dean remembers the rule. That doesn’t mean I, as not-faculty-in-charge, can’t stay more than 24 hours. That is, after all, the package that’s most worth it.

@@ During the Institutional Christmas Celebration meeting last Friday, one of the things I suggested to replace the canned carols that were played after the lighting of the Christmas tree was having our teachers and students record them instead. That way, we would have Yuletide tunes that are uniquely our own, and at the same time allow those who are already here to leave their mark for posterity.

Sadly, the idea just got boiled down to having the college students sing a couple live then lead the rest of the participants in group singing for the rest of the gathering. This can be recorded after all, and I’m sure someone will, but having a studio quality performance is still different.

I understand it that the grade school and high school teachers already feel they are doing too much for the coming month, but don’t they see that it’s going to be just another flash in the pan to be forgotten (and wanted not to be remembered) afterwards, to do over from scratch when the next year rolls up.

To mix metaphors, I guess their plate is too crowded with things to be done for now that they can’t see the road in front of them.

@@ It’s exam time again, and just like in the last two exams, my students in computer systems organization are here in the faculty room again reviewing for their exam at 240pm, which means they are at least four hours early. What’s ironic is that it isn’t their class who should be worried about passing.

In fact, it’s this class that, since it’s their first time to have me as their teacher unlike the other classes, I have been handholding for most of the term, and not only because there are students in this class who, because they are a year older, are following a different flowchart that doesn’t have a prerequisite.

During one exam, I told them that the questions about adder circuits will only be limited to four-bit inputs.

So one of them, who has always been asking questions before exams, showed up with the answers to all possible combinations of four-bit inputs, and asked me if they were right. Then all she had to do was memorize them.

Part of me believes that’s kind of cheating, but I let it slide, because that’s the best kind of preparation I’ve seen from these students.

Besides, I never gave them that sort of assurance again on what will or will not exactly be asked in the exam.

Session 2461 hopes rewarding good students still makes the bad kids want to emulate them. Class dismissed.