Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Today I finished discussing the constellations in two of my classes, both of the one-hour-long ones. I didn’t get to relate all the anecdotes that are usually part of my spiel, like the size of the Sun as seen from Mercury, but at least we’re finished with that part of the outline.

Except for the 1250pm hour-and-a-half class. I was supposed to cram in all the constellations that took me two meetings (Wednesday and Friday) to discuss with the other classes). With only five constellations and twenty minutes to go, the students again pleaded with me to stop the lecture there. This is even though I warned them it meant being behind the other classes. Possibly I said we would need to cram in some future session just to cover all the topics included in the next exam. They accepted that.

I vaguely recall not encountering this problem last time that I handled both 1 and 1.5 hour sections of the same subject. It seems I paced them the other way around back then, and at the end of the week instead of every meeting.

Luckily, both of my one-hour classes are going to have additional activities in the next few weeks. On July 14, the Institutional Testing and Evaluation Office will visit my 920am class as part of the students’ rating of their teacher. Even though that assessment will only be based how I taught the first half of the term, I won’t receive it until after I have submitted all of their final grades. This is only expected to consume up to 1/3 of the class time though at most.
On July 18, their test administrators will visit my 230pm class, but for another reason. This is to give them a specific they may include in the future admissions exam of the university.

The testing officer obviously won’t give me the details about it even if I ask him. I’m considering the assumption though, that if the students do poorly in this test. They have already been accepted by the university, and are in their freshman year. That means the July 18 exam would be considered too difficult to be included in the admissions test. If they did use that exam, they would have to lower the cut-off score.

But all that is just my speculation.

My thesis advisee also returned today, probably after having asked the secretary for my schedule. Of course, he asked about the note I left for him yesterday.

It seems the reason he has abandoned thinking that the tracing works is because he doesn’t get a line that spans the star map. This is because he has only been entering small periods for the outer planets that are visible with the naked eye (Jupiter and Saturn). These planets display only very short movement when seen from the Earth, even for one year.

So at least that’s cleared up. No more second letter requesting for the planet and moon tracing to be removed from his objectives.

I already signed the letters he wants to give to the panel, and the secretary will give them to the people concerned when she sees them.

All in all I'd say it was a productive week.