Oh boy. What a day. I woke up a little early to make sure that my car had plenty of time to defrost. And it did. Little cars heat up quickly. I had some time before class so I went to go get some coffee. Then we had finance. For the first 20 minutes we learned more about hedging and minimizing risk. Then we had a quiz. I'm grateful that we get to drop the lowest grade. I studied for a few hours yesterday, but unfortunately almost all of the questions in the book involved drawing graphs. Which is great for understanding the concepts, but the questions on the quiz did not involve drawing graphs. I did anyhow because that's how I've learned the material, but it's hard to get precise answers from the graphs. So... we'll see.
In between classes I went up to the computer lab to print off the exams. I made a few last minute changes for the sake of clarity. When I was done I went down to the Atrium where Tim, Dustin, and Jacob were located. And we talked about... something. I really don't even know. I'm sure it was very important though.
During life contingencies we talked a little bit about the exam and then just about finished chapter 7. It's a very long chapter and I really haven't had time to read over the rest of the chapter or work any exercises. Thankfully none of this newer stuff is on the exam, but I really need to master it before the final. Oh finals. That's going to be awesome.
Speaking of exams, I gave one today. Yeah.... I hate exam days. Most of these kids try so hard. I know that some of them slack off (like the ones who don't come to class) but others try really hard to do well. They just have no idea how to study for math. Or they're just bad at math. It hadn't occurred to me until today but I might actually be doing them a disservice by giving them a practice exam. Because to me if I have a practice exam I know the types of questions that will probably be asked of me, but then I work lots of problems like that from the text book. But now that I think about it... I'm sure they aren't doing that. Which seems silly that I would even think that college freshmen were doing more than the study guide, but I genuinely thought that they might be doing additional studying outside of it. So for the final I might just give them a list of things to know. I'm also considering various options for the final. Maybe in-class open book, maybe doing the test in partners... I'll almost certainly be eliminating the "None of the above" option on the multiple choice. I may just give a regular test and explain that I have given them ample opportunities to bring their grade up and the week before finals is not the time to start being concerned. Whatever I end up doing... I'm sure I'll be changing it for the spring.
After that I went to my office for a little bit, ate lunch, and started looking at some of the exams. For the bonus question I had them tell me things that they had learned in the class that were math related and non math related. Some of their answers were very heartfelt. Quite a few talked about how they had never realized (since they're all college freshmen) how much work you had to put into a class to do well. This is an important lesson to learn. When I'd finished eating I went over to the graduate school office to ask about summer assistantships. The lady with whom I talked had little to say about them, except that there are not many. So I went over to the career center and they said that jobs probably will not be posted until around spring break. So... I'm not really in any better of a position than I was. Woo.
Then I came home and started grading. I got the multiple choice portion done by dinner time. Then I took a short break to eat and went back at it. I got about 10 test completely graded... and am almost certain that I'll need to curve the grade. It hasn't been that awesome thus far.
I took a break from grading, talked with Clifton for a while, then did some finance problems. After the homework assignment the chapter exercises don't seem so bad, which is good. And now I'm off to bed. I get my take home exam in life con tomorrow. I'm hoping to get that done tomorrow afternoon... but we'll see! Night!
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