I've Gotten More Daylight, Now I Need More Hours

1. Sunny and warm today. Absolutely manic.


2. Still not done with all the stuff that needs to get done today. Most pressing: What am I going to say about infinite sequences at 9:00 tomorrow morning?


3. My new monitor arrived today! 22" of fantasticness. Now I claim that I can get more work done at home because I won't have to contort myself in front of the laptop screen. My next purchase will be a fancy keyboard arm to hold my bluetooth keyboard in an ergonomic position at my vintage desk.


4. Spent most of my sunny day grading the calculus exam. They're slipping. Still several As. But the weak students are falling, falling, falling into the abyss. Alarmingly, one A student seems to have forgotten how to integrate; I know she could evaluate those types of integrals two weeks ago.


5. One calculus student, I just don't know what to say to him. He does all the homework I assign, all the other problems in the textbook, and still more problems that he downloads from the internet. He keeps working on the problems until he gets them. He comes into my office to ask for help. On the previous test, he couldn't "diagnose" the integrals, so he couldn't choose a method of integration. On this one he ran out of time. Everyone else had enough time. His mannerisms are consistent with someone with a brain-based disability, but there's no easy way for me to suggest that if he does have a disability then he should contact disability services.


6. His was not the lowest score. Someone else got a 15%. On a calculus exam where you are allowed to have an integral table AND a notecard, a score of 15% means "don't know anything."


7. Need to find mid-semester replacments for someone who teaches for us and who won't be able to finish out the semester.


8. Dealing with less popular instructors and their complaining students.


9. Received an email suggesting a fantastically bad and intriguing idea. Had the good sense to decline.