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.

And the floodgates have indeed opened. The director of the school of engineering has received another request from an irregular junior engineering student asking to be allowed to stay enrolled in a subject, Strength of Materials, even though he failed the prerequisite, Advanced Mechanics, and is taking it again at the same time. This is even though the first request from another student was rejected.

The student even mentioned in his letter the fact that he knows if it turns out that he fails ADVAMEC and passes STREMAT, his grade there is nullified and he will have to take it again, after passing the first one.

He was probably only seeing the possibility that he can kill two birds with one stone because if he is allowed, he CAN pass both subjects.

Another point of fact: he has already failed ADVAMEC THREE TIMES.

It may be at the insistence of one or both of his parents, but he has been advised and guided (or attempted to be by the guidance counselor) to shift to a less technical course because of his apparent weakness in the required mathematical skills needed for engineering.

What’s strange is that the acting dean and the executive vice president passed the decision on to the director (it was addressed to the dean) saying it was his call, because according to them, the student’s GPA went up in the last term (glossing over the fact that it included the third failure in ADVAMEC). And to think that just in the faculty meeting yesterday the EVP was foreseeing the possible disastrous consequences of not giving the teachers too large a bonus pay for taking on overloaded units. This is one case when we, the teachers in engineering, can predict the flagrant disregard for the flowchart that the students will beg of us if we allow one of their own to bypass the direction of the arrows in what subjects to take.

There are years – even decades – of academic experience behind the formulation of that flowchart. It has been tested by several generations of students. So there’s good reason behind the order of courses to take.

Session 1481 simply hopes. Class dismissed.