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

My schedule has been changed yet again, and I doubt it will be the last time.

First of all, the Introduction to Robotics class has been taken out of my hands, giving me only three lecture classes on Tuesdays and Fridays, and only two of them consecutive. That means I will only have to be on my feet from 940am to 1250pm twice a week continuously.

Doesn’t mean I’ll be hands-off on the whole thing though. I still want to be part of developing the material for this subject, particularly because of how non-traditional and quantitative the evaluation is.

After all, when I met the students during the first day of classes last Friday (before the class was taken from me), I told them that after learning all the basics about the motors, the sensors (light, touch and proximity) and programming how these different inputs could be interpreted to produce outputs in the robot (depending on where along the robot’s “body” the sensors are placed), the highest grade for the class will be given to the group that wins the most number of competitions.

The Electromagnetic Theory class, originally set for Wednesday and Friday, then to Wednesday and Thursday when it was conflict with one of my mechanics lecture classes, then moved to Wednesday morning and afternoon when it was conflict with the students’ Basic Electronics Lab class, will probably be moved again to Thursday morning now that their Basic Electronics Lab has been moved to Wednesday afternoon. It’s not a conflict of schedule, but the students are wary of having an hour and a half of lecture immediately followed by three hours of laboratory.

They are also feeling out the possibility of moving the Tuesday/Friday Advanced Mathematics class from 240-410pm to the middle of the day on Mondays and Thursdays, just so everyone can go home early on those two days. I have already agreed to it, so it’s just as matter of informing the proper authorities.

Lastly, there are three classes in mechanics lecture. Two are at the same time, which is in the 940 to 1110am slot. According to the Registrar’s office, there are only 11 students enrolled in the other 940am class, the one I’m not handling, while there are 21 in my class list.

So there is an idea to just merge the two classes into one, still under my auspices.

In comparison, the 1120am to 1250pm class has 33 students enrolled. Substantially less that the expected 88 signed in and paid for this class this term.

Well, technically this preceding one isn’t a change of schedule.

Returning to the first day of class (last Wednesday) I also met with the mechanics lab class, which was also re-assigned to someone else. This one at least I knew was not mine when I met it, because by that time the real teacher had already left, since we were under the misconception of the earlier loading at the time. But I didn’t tell the students that I wasn’t their teacher when I told them of the class policies.

Good thing, too, that it wasn’t mine: Deiv was there.

I’ll talk about the rest of the Friday classes next time, as well as the classes for the start of this week. For now, class dismissed.