Ponderings
Well, I'm waiting around to see if any of my students show for office hours. I handed back their lab reports last week and there was lots of grumbling, partly at the low grades (I actually was pretty generous) and the prof's announcement about their second test scores. Some of them did horribly on the second exam - below 50%. I have a couple that were struggling before and now failing. I'm trying to counsel them that they should withdraw (you get a W on your transcript) and take the class again. If you fail the class and take it again your grades get averaged. The prof went even so far as to say if you are struggling, they should reconsider their major, which is a little harsh in my opinion. Still I have two students who got zeroes on the lab report (20% of the lab grade) for plagiarizing and neither of them understands what they did wrong.
In happier news, my research is slowly moving along. I have one more batch of primers to check before I can start on the important part of my experiment and hopefully generate some data quickly to present at the conference in Dec. I also need to finish working on one other batch of data - but that's primarily a software issue.
I'm looking forward to the LA con in a little less than two weeks. Time to see some people again and I need a weekend away. I'm starting to think about going to the Vancouver con - but it is a bit expensive and one of the bigger cons (I'm not sure about dealing with some of the crazy people). Still, I'm excited about the guest list so far and it might be my last chance to see the Atlantis set.
In happier news, my research is slowly moving along. I have one more batch of primers to check before I can start on the important part of my experiment and hopefully generate some data quickly to present at the conference in Dec. I also need to finish working on one other batch of data - but that's primarily a software issue.
I'm looking forward to the LA con in a little less than two weeks. Time to see some people again and I need a weekend away. I'm starting to think about going to the Vancouver con - but it is a bit expensive and one of the bigger cons (I'm not sure about dealing with some of the crazy people). Still, I'm excited about the guest list so far and it might be my last chance to see the Atlantis set.