Dead Week

Four more lectures to go, one for each class. And, really, all that's left is review for all of them. In Math015, I had to quickly go over percentages on Monday (because somehow chapter 7 hadn't made it onto the syllabus), but I just presented them as another type of proportion problem. The book also goes through the more usual method of decimal multiplication, but as I was short on time, I wanted the material to have as little new stuff in it as possible. Hence, I showed them how to do everything as proportions. But today we can just review.

In Math025, we started reviewing Monday, and made it up to polynomial arithmetic. In Math123, we finished up the chapter on the normal distribution last night, and then I did a brief overview of that chapter. On Thursday we'll review the probability chapter. Since that class isn't a prerequisite for anything, I chose not to do a cumulative final, so their "final" exam is just over those chapters. Much to my surprise, I've enjoyed teaching that class. It's a fun mix of topics. My only frustration is that the students really don't have the math background to appreciate some of the topics.

I think between my grandma's death and everything else that's happened this semester, I'm just burned out. Especially on grading. I've been spending most of my extra time writing, and once again I'm getting plot elements to mesh (including one that I'd more or less discarded as extraneous; it turned out to be the key in making two other plotlines fuse together). This weekend, I plan to get the Math123 final written, but then I think I'll read through Parsival's Test again, and then see about getting Kinkos to print it for me on nice paper. I would like to get it submitted sometime soon. Fibonacci pointed out one place where the reasoning behind a character's actions is not clear. It wasn't supposed to be crystal clear, but it looks like I need to do a touch-up so that it's not completely obfuscated.

The differences between projects can be rather amusing at times. Parsival's Test is nearly all from the POV of only two characters. The sequel that I'm working on now does not have a primary POV character, or even characters. There are three intertwined plotlines that will soon collide, then there probably will be a more unified feel, since all but one of those will be resolved (for the purposes of this project) at the collision. Anyway, I need to get a Math015 test changed up enough for a student to take it this morning. So I've got a slightly different writing project to work on.