Wednesday, October 07, 2009

the trauma of examinatιons.

today is midterm #1 for my students. i get up early, just so i can have copies of the exam ready, with time to spare.

i wait for the bus.
it arrives ..
full of people, like sardines.

it doesn't bother stopping. i don't blame the driver, but ..

[sighs]

lost time: 10 min.



doors in my department are strange, because they have two locks: one for metal keys and another 5-button combination lock.

i never use the combo lock, so i don't know the combination. last night, apparently, my new officemate decided to use it. so this morning i was locked out of my office.

lost time: 15 min.



i teach two sections of calculu∫ ii, which makes a total of 120 students. [1] and 120 copies of exams to make.

the photocopier works,
the collator works,

but the stapler attached to the collator stops working after 20 copies or so. it's mildly interesting: at some point i learned how much an exam should weigh, because i had to staple 100 of them by hand ..

lost time: 20 min.



i made it to the classroom just in time ..

.. and people wonder why i'm paranoid. in retrospect, i should have just stayed late at the office, last night, and made the copies before midnight.


as for the exam, if my students had any love for me before, it's gone now. i guess it was a hard exam, despite being a collection of practice problems and lecture examples.


[1] maybe they'll give me an undergraduaτe analysιs class, next term. that's only fair: i've been a good little mathematician this year ..

2 comments:

Leonid said...

Having tried both, I would take calc 2 over undergraduate analysis any semester. But that's just me.

Good idea about having an exam photocopied the night before.

janus said...

i'll have more to say about undergraduate analysis, in the days to come.

to be honest, i don't remember exactly what u.a. covers, which might cause a disaster. as a sophomore, i recall using Rudιn's book for a class that was 3/4's full of grad students and a handful of undergrads. after that, it was just measurε theory and compleχ analysιs.

photocopies on midterm eve is my usual practice, actually. this term i just seem to be scattered; i blame the ηsf proposal. (-: