stick a fork in it, it's done

I still have final exams to grade and final grades to calculate for two classes but otherwise, it's so OVER, baby.

As usual, the last days were full of drama. Two students emailed to say they wanted to take their finals at a different time than scheduled. Well, wouldn't life be grand if faculty were basically on 24/7 call for exam week, and students could pop in whenever it was convenient to their schedule. But, alas, no. There is a makeup session at the end of exam week which is a pain in that the prof has to hand-deliver the exam and then pick it up in person (after pretty much everyone else is gone from campus), but convenient for profs at least in the sense that it is proctored at the academic support center, so usually once I dangle THAT option, students find that their schedule allows them to attend the regularly-scheduled final after all.

Then another student has been in regular contact about the possibility of not passing. I calculated his grade last weekend, and found that even if he got 100% on the final (highly unlikely!) he would still fail. So I advised him of this via email, and when he finally got the email (yesterday morning) he freaked and showed up at my office at the crack of dawn yesterday to beg and make vague references to terminally ill family members, the crisis in Haiti, and ill-defined car problems. I packed him off to the academic support center, where apparently he is well-known, since he has been on and off academic probation most of his THREE YEARS in college. The guy over there called me later and congratulated me for doing the right thing by not caving to The Begging. The admin types at my school are of the tough-love variety, mostly, which is really a blessing, when you consider how many academic blog posts complain about how the admin mostly caves to student whining, thereby undermining the faculty.

I was surprised to see a couple of other long-missing faces at one of the finals, students I'd assumed had dropped without really dropping. (For health insurance, or sports, or financial aid, apparently it's better to take the F than drop to part-time status.) So there are three other Fs in that course in the works in addition to The Beggar.

That's a new record for me, but it's not because I'm a hard-ass. If you don't come to class and you don't turn in the assignments, why would you expect to pass??? (Oh, yeah, they are also bad at math.)

Well, let's go see if I can crank out some grading, and some mathy spreadsheets (oh, soooo complicated!) of my own.