Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

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

In the first meeting of my Computer Systems Organization class for the eighth week of the third term, I gave the students another chance to catch up on their laboratory experiments, so we meet in Robotics.

The past two days before this meeting, there were already a lot of requests for me to move the date of the test I first announced, because they were already swamped in other subjects with tests on the same day.

This gave me mixed emotions. First, it seems that the students may find me the kindest of their professors for this term, which is why they would dare not approach any of their other teachers with the same plea.

On the other hand, they may view it in a more derogatory manner, that I’m the most of a pushover among their teachers who they believe will cave in to their insistence.

I didn’t give in without extracting a condition from them though that I believe to be fair: that the coverage of the test will be increased. This announcement, at least, did not meet with protests and complaints. Hopefully they felt that it was a righteous compromise, or that further haggling might cause me to put my foot down once and for all, and maybe then not in their favor at that point of the “negotiations”.

I’m not one of those churlish instructors though that will barrage the students with new topics just because an exam supposed to be scheduled for that day is cancelled.

Besides, giving them more time to familiarize themselves in the laboratory with the concepts that will be in included in the test will help justify the types of questions that I will give, and they cannot whine anymore about how difficult the exam is because every moment they spent in the laboratory is considered to be part of their study or review. So if they were the ones who wasted their time in the lab not applying the lessons, it’s primarily their fault and not mine.

The group that finished their circuit the last time, by the way, still had previous experiments left undone so they had no reason to skip the class.

Session 1019’s test was moved. Class dismissed.