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

Another batch of unposted tidbits from last week:
last Friday was the deadline for the alternative visual aids for those who didn't/can't go on the field trip. I've received three projects so far: one solo and two pairs, depending on the "difficulty" of the topic chosen.

As I was leaving my 1250-220pm class one student who signed up for the project approached me and asked, "The deadline is Nov. 17, right?"

You'd think with all the technology for storing information at their fingertips they'd have a better way of remembering deadlines.

In fact there was one student who approached me last Monday about looking at the list of available topics. FIVE DAYS FROM THE SUBMISSION DATE.

I told him to go to the department and sign up, but he didn't show up. Instead, last Friday, one of the groups asked if they could include classmates in their work. Only if you want your grade divided by three instead of by two, I said.

At the end of the Friday period, the same guy from Monday finally reserved a topic.

So their paper was submitted between 4-7pm at the department (remember I was in Makati at that time), and there were two thick black lines besides their names where they had removed the names of last-minute "groupmates".

Talk about minimum effort.

On to yesterday, it was the last day of entrance exams. My proctor, who had had experience with ither examiners before, brought over the habit of having the students use the test booklets in the same order as their seat numbers, which is big hassle. After all that's why the students are asked to write their test booklet numbers in their answer sheet, so that it doesn't have to be assumed their test booklet numbers are in the same order as their seat numbers. Unless you hand the students the test booklets individually, or give them instructions only to take the test booklet on top when they pass them to the back of the row, which is something I've never bothered with in the past six or so years of facilitating this.

But she went out of her way to make sure they had the test booklets in the proper order, even if some of them had already written their booklet numbers down in the answer sheet. I didn't stop her because she is staff in one of the offices in the university, and she might take it out on one of my requests one of these days if I told her to desist.

It didn't hinder us in the morning session, because we were still the first to finish, and when she told me that the Testing Office personnel asked her what we - or I - did to be so fast, she couldn't say anything out of the ordinary happened like cutting time in each test.

In the afternoon session, all of our examinees were from the province, and I noticed that all their names were in alphabetical order, even though they were from as far North as Baguio and as far south as Zamboanga.

I guess the Testing Office received their application forms at the same time, and scheduled them all on the last day of exams, that's why there was time to alphabetize their names.

I guess it was because they were from the provinces that they underestimated the traffic in the metropolis, because, a full 10 out of the 40 examinees didn't make the 2pm start of the test. That's the most number of absentees I've seen, and for the Testing Office personnel as well. For the first time, when I was tallying the number of scratch papers (of which there are 20 extra) I wrote down the same number of the used and unused ones.

And that's enough space and time for now. I'll post tomorrow about what happened today.