In the first session of my mechanics lecture class for the seventh week of classes, I started on motion in two dimensions, concentrating on horizontal, vertical and diagonal displacement.

Since a lot of them were already my students in trigonometry sometime last year, the conversion of the compass directions was hopefully just a review for most of them.

I also gave a short rundown of what quantities we have been discussing so far and will be discussing are considered as vectors and which are scalars. For the latter, this includes mass and weight.

I started with adding two or more horizontal and vertical displacement vectors, and what single vector this added up to. Then we proceeded to adding two or more vectors that are diagonal.

For this one, they had to resolve the vectors into vertical and horizontal components first, maintaining the signs they got, adding all the vertical and all the horizontal components separately, then resolving it into one vector again, using the Pythagorean theorem, and the inverse of the proper right triangle relationships.

It was in the middle of this that my peer evaluators finally showed up. And this was at the exact time that one of the students that I called to the board was joking with another who was teasing him about throwing a trashcan at her, and bringing over her grandmother to complain with the Discipline office. This is in reference to a recent student confrontation case.

Perfect.

Another student, who was just sitting in, also showed up while the peer evaluators were there with handfuls of snacks, which she brought straight to the front.

Even more perfect.

And while I was making up a sample problem on the spot and writing it on the board, it was the evaluators who were more audible than the students. I guess the students know when to be on their best behavior after all.

Afterwards, when the evaluators left, a girl from the class said she became tense when they walked in, and asked me if I was.

I said I was too, but in reality, I was more relieved. No more waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Session 827’s peers finally evaluate its classroom performance as well at this point. Class dismissed.