As I was grading my students’ most recent exam this week, I found myself in that familiar state of being angry/annoyed with how incompetent they are at performing mathematics.  I’ve cooled down considerably since that initial emotional ride, but I’m still left with the bitter taste in my mouth.  On average, my students, who I’ve been working hard to instill concepts, algorithms, ideas, work ethic, etc into for 8 weeks now, only earned about half of the points available to them on the exam.  I think the thing that bothered me the most were the TYPES of errors I saw.  It was ridiculously obvious to me that a significant portion of the students did not study for this exam for any measurable amount of time.  I mean, I’m “known” for writing “hard” exams, but this one was by far the easiest exam I’ve ever given.  I haven’t written that many exams so saying I’m “known” for a certain type of exams is a little silly, but my colleagues that proofread my exams tend to say they’re one notch too high on the difficulty scale.  This time, however, everyone agreed that it was a “relatively easy” exam.  Not that that matters to students.  And I never say “This is an easy exam” to the students because I don’t want to be condescending to those who don’t do well.  But anyway…

In general, the mistakes they made were that they had no idea how to start many of the problems so they either wrote bullshit or nothing. Then, once they started the problem, they had no idea what their goal was, so they fumbled with symbols until they got to something that vaguely resembled a number or something, and then they circled that.  When I returned the exams, I know I was visibly annoyed.  I tried to hide my emotions as much as I could because as a student it’s rough enough to get a paper back with a red F written on it, and it’s even worse if the teacher is being mean or condescending about it.  I tried to be as nice as I could, while still letting them know that their grades are headed in the wrong direction and they should all (except maybe about 3 of them, who are doing consistently well) consider putting more time and effort into this class after spring break if they want to end up with a passing grade.

Speaking of… it’s spring break now!  I’m allowing myself to have a relaxing weekend, but I’m going to have a lot of work to do this week.  I have two topology problem sets due after break (and that class is finally getting difficult – it only took 1.5 semesters), I need to make some progress on my master’s project, and I have to do some grading for the upper level class I’m grading for this semester.  I also want to do some cleaning, some recreational reading, and some video gaming.  I’ll be at home alone all day for 5 days and no plans, though, so I should be able to put a dent in most of these tasks.  I’m looking forward to being able to sleep in but still having a productive week.  During all 4 years of college, I worked 40-60 hours during each of my spring breaks at 1-3 jobs.  Last year, I took a trip for spring break for the first time ever (to Vegas).  This year is another first – I’m laying low at home with stuff to do, but no schedule at all.  It should be a nice change.

After spring break it’ll be the home stretch of the semester.  Just 6 weeks of classes left before finals week.  Two of those weekends I won’t be able to do a lot of work because I’m going to two math conferences in April.  It’s going to be crazy busy, I’m sure.  But I’m thinking it’ll be a lot of fun.  Then it’ll be summer which will be a haze of travel (hoping to make it home to PA for a visit), studying for my second (and hopefully last) PhD qualifying exam, teaching, and staying in the air conditioning.  🙂

It’s already getting warm again here in Texas (it never really got cold this year, unlike last winter)!