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

Because of last Monday’s class suspension, I didn’t get to collect the students’ payment then for the field trip on Saturday. I had to do that today, but then only for my 920am and 230pm classes.

I was supposed to go to Enchanted Kingdom’s Makati office yesterday, but I had to postpone that for this afternoon. Luckily, when I called up their office, I was told I could still buy the tickets tomorrow morning, because my last class ended at 330pm and their office closed at 5pm. I didn’t have enough time to count all the money then go there.

I have decided that for my 1250pm class, which I will meet on Friday, I will go back to their Makati office after my class, and just distribute the tickets to my students on Saturday morning from the department.

That’s also the same thing I told students today who asked if they could pay tomorrow or on Friday. It never fails: set a deadline and students will still try to get around it.

Also, yesterday, one of the students of my 1250pm class showed up in the department saying that since there was no class last Monday, he didn’t get the waiver form. I told him Monday was the deadline of the waiver form, not when it would be distributed. So I just gave him a form to submit on Friday.

In both my astronomy classes, I also finally gave them the activity for using the mock telescope to trace the movement of the stars that are in a diagonal arc in places like Manila, which are not at the poles or along the equator. They also had to trace a half circle that is not directly overhead. All of these they had to do while adjusting only one of the telescope’s degrees of movement, not two like in the example I gave them.

Afterwards the groups brought their mock telescopes to the department for submission, with or without the laser pointers attached, which they might have just borrowed from their parents or something. At the start of the activity, of course, I also had to tell them the dangers of working with laser pointers, which is why all the paths they were supposed to trace were only on the chalkboard while I sat at the back.

In my introductory programming class, I gave them the third exercise in a row about loops, which was an election simulation. I also gave back their first exam, and wrote down about the second exam on Monday on the board.

Again I don’t think a lot of the students were able to finish it. One student asked me to just give them a disk of the program instead of a printout. As a compromise I told her I’ll upload the samples on a website and post the link in the department tomorrow. Another student asked why I never lectured in the laboratory. So that they could maximize their computer time, I said. Besides, I believe the task descriptions I give them are accurate enough and I’m always around for them to ask if they had any questions.

Some asked me for my consultation hours (in preparation for the exam, I suppose), and I just told them I would be in the department the whole afternoon tomorrow.