Day 124

Oh my.  What a day.


So let's talk about math finance.  We sit down before Mr. Frye gets there and we start talking about when we think the exam might be.  So Mr. Frye walks in and Tim says "Question, Mr. Frye.  We have exams over the next few days in our other classes and we were beginning to wonder when we might have an exam in this class."  To which he replies "Funny you should mention it... I was thinking Tuesday."  At this point we all elected to quit the program and work at McDonald's.  Forever.


Allow me to explain the significance of having an exam on Tuesday.  You see, in about 11 hours I will be starting my life contingencies exam, for which I have been studying most of the week.  About 12 hours ago I administered an exam for my class, meaning that over the weekend I will be needing to grade those, along with the homework that they turned in today.  So over the weekend I will be studying for math finance, studying for statistics, doing statistics homework, grading tests and homework, and preparing for my lessons next week.  Oh.  Joy.  What good fun this will be.


Anyhow.  Life contingencies went well.  We talked about the exam.  Went over some problems.  We had a mini lecture on Simpson's rule for integration approximation.  I don't recall talking about anything else.


I gave my first exam today.  I think it went alright.  The test bank I used had some critical error on one of the questions, so I had to fix that on the fly.  Yay. It was also interesting to see some of the answers for the extended response questions.  It was apparent that some people understood the ideas yet did not know the math.  So the answers could be solved just using logic and that's what some people did.  I will certain give them partial credit for that... but in the directions I state that you must show all your work to get full credit.  So they were warned.  I also had  a bonus question that reflected on the stories I've read in class.  Some of their answers were really good.  I also gave bonus points for people dressing up today.  A lesson has been learned: my class doesn't automatically associate "dressing up" with "business casual."  Some of the girls that came in... I'm confident that they wore their clubbing dresses and skirts.  So perhaps next time I will specify "business casual."  Most of them cleaned up very nicely.  There's one guy that sits in the front row that constantly surprises me.  He never says a word, dresses pretty gangsta, and always seems bored in class.  But he always does very well on his homework and from what I saw he at least had a good idea of what to do on the test.  I wouldn't be surprised if he did very well.  Anyhow, he cleaned up very nicely.  I expected him to not really care that much about dressing up, but I was pleasantly surprised.


After I finished with the test I had lunch and studied for life contingencies.  Then I came home and studied some more.  And some more.  Around 4:30 Timbo came over.  He brought hamburger helper.  So we had dinner... then studied some more.  I finally finished around 9.  My brain could not take in any more information.  Bleh.  So I quit and did some dishes and laundry.  And now I'm going to bed.  Hopefully all the answers come to me tomorrow!  


And...good night.