Tales from a Hectic Friday

I still haven't been able to make the time to drive to FarWest Hospital to get the e-film from my CTA test.

Today I brought the laptop in to my honors course. We did the coin problem. Most of them were familiar with the answer for 8 and 9 coins. We did 12 coins with 4 weighings in class, and I assigned them 3 weighings for homework. It was super-convenient with my Bluetooth mouse. I was able to sit with the students while we did it or to let them control things by handing over the mouse.

More and more of my calc 1 students from the spring are trying to get into my calc 2. Who the hell is teaching calc 2 this semester?

I am dealing with placement issues. Our registration system does not enforce placement, so I have to manually drop the students who ignore placement. To make sure that we haven't screwed up, we email them a few times to make sure that they know that they aren't supposed to be in the class. I feel bad dropping them (most classes are full, so finding another course may be tricky), but they were warned repeatedly.

I am also over-riding placement for students with mitigating circumstances. It's logistically easy since the computer doesn't enforce placement. When I approve an override, I tell the student, "I am putting you on the list. Once you get back to your dorm, you should be able to add the class online as long as there are available seats in that section." I am keeping a paper list in case the teacher of the class has a question.

My favorite grad student came into my office for an hour and bitched about all sorts of things. By comparison, my life is going really well!