when a lecture has no worth, say what you want [EPILOGUE ADDED].

i'm hard-pressed to think of what to discuss today, in my analysιs class. we've covered what i wanted out of chapter 5 already. running time backwards,

next week: spring break
friday: midterm / "spring break eve"
wednesday: review session

so .. today?!?

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if i start chapter 6, then i'll just have to review half of it after break .. which will over-test my patience.

if i give a pre-review session, then that might help. then again, review sessions are already enough teeth-pulling ..

in that everyone has questions,
but nobody ever asks anything

so why have two of them?

i don't want to cancel class either;
that sets a tricky precedent for future pre-exam weeks .. \-:

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ultimately, today's lecture isn't worth anything, in terms of the syllabus. maybe i'll just talk about what i want to talk about --

a supplementary lecture, like unifοrn convergence,
power series as continuous functions,
and why sine and cosine are continuous, after all

-- and just tell the students that they are not responsible for remembering it, i.e. that it will never come up on any homeworks, quizzes, or exams.

at least that would stop them from worrying. heck, with the stress off, they might even listen more attentively than usual .. (-:

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- added: 2 mar '10 -- 12:55am -

well, on the whole that that was a foolish idea. i don't think the students got much out of it. i should have held an impromptu review session, instead.

my greatest gaffe was telling the students that they didn't need to take notes. it didn't occur to me how quickly it would take them to lose interest.

on a related but disturbing note, my students had the same looks on their faces as my audiences, when i give conference talks. maybe i have this effect on everyone.. \-: