SKILLS COMPETITION

It's really hard to shoot a ball hockey ball through a hole in the concrete in a parkade across 30 feet and into an empty net .

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ONE MORE TO GO

Yesterday, I wrote the final exam for my AI class. I was a bit nervous going to it, though I wasn't sure why. I already had about 50% in the class, so passing wasn't the problem. There is also this fuzzy area about needing > 67% in your classes to stay in grad school. That meant I needed at least 34 marks (out of 100) to get to that 67% level.

The exam took place in this really, comfy room in the Forest Sciences Centre. It had big tables and nice chairs. We had three hours to complete the exam. I'm guessing that I got 65-70% on the exam, which means I should get an 'A-', but we'll have to wait and see.

It's been a while since I've had an exam with a three hour time limit and I used almost of that. After I got home, I was very relieved and ready to relax. I took a nap and went to dinner. After dinner, I vacuumed my room, which needed it badly. After that, I helped a fellow SJC resident, Adam, with his video presentation for his CS 544 course. He needed a narrator for his video, so I went over to his room and laid down some tracks. We were debating if I should do it as Robert Goulet or Bill Cosby, but I played it straight.

I made brownies after that. I enjoy baking and I haven't done enough of that this year. I couldn't frost my brownies (not a euphemism for anything) until it was cool, so I really had nothing else to do. It was around 11pm and I thought, "I need a beer."

I knocked on Patrick's door and good sport as he always is, he obliged me. We went to Koerner's on campus and had some beer and good conversation. Patrick is a good, dependable friend.

Afterwards, we made our way to McDonald's for some food. We came back around 1:30am and I wanted to frost my brownies (why does that always sound dirty?) but Chris engaged me in conversation for nearly half an hour.

I went to bed after that and I woke up at noon. It's nearly 2pm and I've done nothing all day, and I really should start studying for my other exam.

I'm feeling and acting like I'm done all my exams, which is a very dangerous thing to do. Ok, I'm going to frost my brownies now.

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YOU CAN GO TO THE BATHROOM NOW

So, I did my exam invigilation yesterday. I get to exam room at 8am. There are lots of students outside waiting. I go in. All the exam papers have already been placed on the desks. The instructor comes in and tells me that she and the other TA will be outside checking calculators. I am supposed to stop people from entering the exam room. Great.

I basically sit on my ass for half hour. 8:30am rolls around. The instructor, Daniela, and the other TA, Dana are both from my research lab. Daniela lets the students in. They file in, take their places, and generally look nervous.

Final instructions are given. They are told to start the exam. Dana grabs the class list and starts going around to check IDs. That leaves me with a whole lot of nothing to do. I'm tempted to read my textbook, which I've brought, but I'm being paid to be observe the students, not study. So, I start patrolling the two aisles of the lecture hall.

I see nothing out of the ordinary. I can't answer any questions because it's been a while since I've taken the course, and I haven't seen the exam, so I don't know what Daniela has written for the questions. All I can do is point out people to Daniela when they raise their hands. My entire purpose there is to prevent people from cheating.

I go up to the top of the hall and find an empty seat. Damn, this is really, really boring. As Dana goes around to check IDs, she's also checking that everyone has an authorized cheat sheet. They were instructed to have only a single hand-written cheat sheet. That's a standard rule which some instructors have. It's not hard to follow... so I thought. Dana starts finding people who can't follow instructions. One guy has an entire typed out cheat sheet. Dana confiscates it and takes it away. He looks incredulous. He comes down to talk to Daniela. I can't hear what he's saying but he looks to be pleading his case. She's firm. He walks away, accepting his fate. He no longer has a list of equations that he needs. I hope he has a good memory.

Dana finds two more people like that. How hard is it to write out an equation as opposed to photocopying it or typing it out? Dumb.

As they explore more of the exam, the questions from the students increase in number. I move back to the front of the hall and I'm pointing left and right to people with questions.

I also notice the things people bring into exams. One guy has brought a sheet of plywood three or four feet in length to the exam. He's got it laid out across three desks to form a "super-desk". It's actually quite inventive since these lecture halls have really tiny desks and you usually have several papers to refer to. Another guy has a small Buddha sculpture on his desk. I didn't see him rub it for good luck, but I assumed he did. Water is a popular item to bring. Some people have coffee, which I wouldn't bring to an exam. A few people have food too.

About an hour into the exam, the requests for a bathroom run begin. Back in my undergrad days, no one went to the bathroom. You just made sure you were bone dry before and you didn't leave. Now, people are asking like crazy. We can only let one person at a time leave, so a queue starts up. Dana keeps the line-up in her head.

Up and down the aisles I walk looking for funny business. I see none. I go back to the front and I take a look at the students. I'm about ten years older than most of them. I marvel at how long ten years is, and wonder how fast time has flown by.

There are certainly more women in mechanical now compared to my time. I had one female in my mechanical class, and I went to high school with her. This class was nearly 30% female. That's incredible. I'm guessing engineering is now a much more attractive option to females now. This is good.

At the 1.5 hour mark or so, Daniela gives me some money to go get some food for all of us. I return with some coffee, tea, and some bagels. Despite my little field trip, I'm still bored.

At the 2.5 hour mark, the exam ends. Daniela tells everyone to stop writing. She doesn't want anyone to leave until she has collected all the papers. I thought she was going to let me and Dana go around, collect the exams quickly, count them, and then let the students leave. Nope. I was wrong. And here is where it went south.

Instead, she came around to each student, re-confirmed their ID, ticked something off on a sheet and then moved onto the next person. No one could leave until all the exams were in and accounted for. She was spending 15 seconds on average per student and there were over 120 students there. It would take over half an hour just to collect the exams. I quickly realized this and so did many other people. The comments started to fly.

"This is going to take forever."

"I have another exam at 1pm. I have to go."

"I need to pee, really, really badly."

"I need to study."

"Can I go."

I sensed a riot in the making, so I let the students go to the bathroom, but told them to come back. Some people started talking, eating, and studying. The rest were getting impatient. A lot of them complained to me. I told them I didn't make the rules, I just enforced them. I felt sorry for them, I'd never seen anything like this.

Half an hour went by, and Daniela had gotten to the last 20 people or so. Then, by some unheard or unseen signal, everyone just got up and left. They had had enough and I didn't blame them. The problem was, we hadn't counted the exams yet. Right.

All the exams came in and I was told I could leave. Total time spent? Four hours. Way too long. I've had my fill of invigilation for a while.

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STUDY BREAK

I should really be studying but I just had to show you something. It's a magnet for your door and fridge. I think I may get it.

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CONCERN

I don't want everybody to get worried, but does anyone realize that the sun isn't up at 7am? Like shouldn't someone look into that? How long has this been happening? Geez, it's so damn early, I'm surprised I'm able to hit these plastic keys in some coherent fashion...

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BAH

It's almost 11pm and I just realized I have to be up in eight hours. That's insane. How the hell do you early risers live like this? I'm going to be in an ornery mood tomorrow.

"No, you can't go to the bathroom. I'll get you a damn cup, go pee in it."

"What does that mean? How the hell should I know? Maybe you should have studied, eh genius?"

"Dude, you've got ten minutes left, if you haven't got it now, you'll never get it, do all of us a favour and hand the sumbitch in so I can get some roast chicken in me."

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OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN

Tomorrow, I will walk into an exam room and be bored out of my mind for two and a half hours. Yes, that's right, I'm going to invigilate a second year mechanical engineering final exam. The course is Rigid Body Dynamics and I took it myself many, many moons ago. I really enjoyed the material. You get to draw a lot of diagrams and by the end, you do things like predict trajectories of flying objects (ie. missiles) or model the behaviour of impacts between rigid bodies (ie. a puck off the boards or glass).

Anyways, since the day I knew I was going to be a TA, I was looking forward to this. Ya see, for five straight years in undergrad, whenever I walked into a final examination room, I was the one doing the sweating. There would always be the TAs who made sure you weren't cheating and who checked your ID. They looked bored out of their mind for most of the time. You couldn't even ask them questions, because they usually weren't the TAs for the course. I'd always think, "Man, I wonder what it's like being in their shoes instead of sitting and squirming for hours on end?"

So now, I'm a TA and tomorrow I'll get to see what it's like. Am I still looking forward to it? To be honest... no. The damn exam is at 8:30am in the morning and I have to be there at 8am. I have my own AI exam to write the day after so I'll be totally screwed up because of the early time. I go to bed usually around 4am now, so this is gonna throw a big wrench in the works.

I'll probably be so out of it during the exam that people could cheat right in front of me and I wouldn't notice. And seriously, how boring is it to watch people be nervous for two and a half hours? The space-time continuum must warp during exams because to the students, those hours will just fly by.

Invigilating an exam is something I probably will appreciate doing afterwards, but dude, 8am is early!

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IT WAS A PLEASURE

Most of you know I was a TA for the first time this term. I've tutored high school students one-on-one before but this was the highest level of education I've been involved in as an instructor. This was also the largest number of students I've had at one time as well, totaling over 40 students in my tutorial.

I met with them four hours a week for the last three months. Over that time, I think everybody got to know me quite well. Sometimes you don't even remember your TA's name, I think every one of my students knew my name.

They had their last tutorial last Wednesday. I had to give them a quiz, which probably wasn't the best way to end things, but I think they all did alright.

As they handed in their papers, some of my students were thoughtful enough to make some comments to me. Several of them thanked me for being their TA and shook my hand. I really appreciated this. A few even wished me good luck with my degree. It's nice to know they remembered that I'm a student too.

One guy even said that out of all his TAs, I was the best in the bunch. I asked him how many TAs he had and he said three. This made me feel good. As engineering students, they'll see a million TAs in their academic career and I hope for at least him, I'll have set some standard.

One young lady said that I was "awesome" and I should teach. I thanked her for her comments. A lot of people have said I'd make a good instructor, but I don't see myself teaching elementary or high school students. The only other option is post-secondary, and they usually don't let you teach at that level without a doctorate. Unfortunately, I don't really see myself doing a PhD.

At the end, I felt a sense of responsibility for these students. I hope that even in the littlest sense I was able to impart some wisdom, some indication of what you need to do to survive as an engineering student.

Most TAs are evaluated by a form that each students fills out. I will not be getting such feedback. The course I TA'd is unique in the sense there are several instructors and the standard forms don't fit the mold. It's really too bad since I'd like to improve on what I did this term.

Before I gave the quiz out, I told my students it was a pleasure having them this term and I wished them good luck with the rest of their career at UBC. I'll probably won't TA any of them ever again.

About an hour after the quiz was handed out, they had all left. I was a bit sad to see them go, but next term I'll have a whole new set of students to meet.

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DAY LATE, DOLLAR SHORT

It's nearly five am. I shoudn't be up and it's probably not a good idea to be blogging now either. Oh well. This is what happens during final exam time.

I'm a day behind my study schedule for my AI final exam on Thursday. I did not do a lick of studying on Saturday. Instead, in the afternoon, I wound up somewhere downtown, food shopping, and sniffing Rhonda's bread on the Aquabus. I got back at 5pm and a sane person would have ordered in and started studying for the night. Instead, I somehow wound up at Earl's for dinner. Yep, it was good company and food all around. The meal was smooth as Merino wool. So a sane person would have started studying at 9pm when I got back, but instead I played Trivial Pursuit till midnight. And there my friends was my day.

I sorta live by this rule these days. If I have two competing options with what to do during the day, I use the rule: Ten years from now, which option would I remember more? Just about about everything is more memorable than studying, thus my choice on Saturday. I didn't have this rule in undergrad, and it probably accounts for my unrealistically high (given my mental capacity) undergrad GPA.

I tried my best to kick some ass today, but I'm not sure if I made up a day. I'll probably have to go hard again tomorrow. You know, I was at this stage of studying yesterday, I'd be in great shape. What's done is done though and you can't change the past.

What? No, I can't. I haven't even warmed up! Alright, alright, I'll sing you a song.

Good night folks!

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'TIS THE SEASON

Hey, it's getting to be that holiday time of the year.

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