Today's Impossible Tasks

I had 20 minutes to describe everything about math placement and math advising to new advisors -- some of whom are completely brand new to both this university and to advising.

My strategy:

1. Scary data about the number of failures in math classes.
2. Graphs showing that success in math classes is positively correlated with placement score*.
3. Basic description of our typical freshman courses and the placement levels they require.
4. A reminder to use the written guides.

In other impossible tasks, I continue to unsuccessfully seek chemists and engineers in the Cambridge/Boston area who are willing to host students in their labs. Starting, um, like pretty damn soon. I've even resorted to emailing my friend Rebecca who I know from summer camp almost 20 years ago to see if she could help.

On the bright side, I have had a conceptual understanding with FileMaker, and I have made an absolutely awesome layout.


*We all know that placement score and success in math classes are probably both a function of a general sense of academic non-fucked-up-ness.