J left the house at 8:12 am on Tuesday to procter an exam beginning at 10 am. The weather was clear and sunny; the roads were clear and dry. It took her 1 hour and 45 minutes to drive the 45 highway miles to her destination. (This is usually a 45-minute trip.)
If J. has to make the same trip on Friday, to be ready to procter at 9 am, at what time must she leave the house, assuming that the roads are moderately sloppy (it's been snowing all day on Thursday)? What role does the "Friday-before-Christmas" time frame play? (Might be beneficial - people take the day off, less traffic. Might be devastating - pent up shopping demand from all this snow leads to record traffic jams.)
Post answers in the comments. Partial credit will be given if you show your work. (Yeah, I'm a softie.)
MUST GRADE FINAL EXAMS. Don't wanna do it.
I have a number of informal pedagogical experiments going at the moment. I wish I had been thinking more along these lines in August: I have had two sections of the same course, with the possibility of a variable-control situation. I haven't really availed myself of it, except that one section had a review session and the other did not (cancelled due to the aforesaid snowstorm). So all my discoveries are informal, anecdotal, and alas not suited to write-up in professional journals.
In my other course, I gave out the final exam questions (10 of them) and told them I would pick 3. There was some whining about "that's so hard, for us to prepare 10 - why can't WE choose?" My questions were good questions, I thought: but am I getting good answers? How to get students to think more deeply and creatively, rather than just trying to cram the material and give me what they think I am looking for? In my first exam, there was quite a bit of good thinking. I hope I'll see it here too. But I have to find ways to model that creativity and help them to practice that creativity, throughout the semester.
My hypothesis is: discovery can lead to deep thinking. Must practice that in the spring semester.
After the Thursday snow debacle, we spent a lot of Friday cleaning out. The "new" asphalt driveway is great, because you can get right down to pavement. Shoveling at this house involves not only the driveway, but also the front sidewalk (some confusion about whether that's REQUIRED by local ordinance) and front steps. At a full story's worth of steps, that's not a trivial matter. Then there's the ancient drain at the curb, and the catchbasin at the other end of our frontage, so that if there is rain after the snow neither our basement nor the entire street will be flooded out. (Ah, civic responsibility!)
Saturday was a great day and then Saturday night into Sunday it snowed all over again: light fluffy stuff, then sleet, then rain. We shoveled it out about three times, trying to keep up and prevent the freeze-up.
I still ache from that as well as the bruises I got from trying to unstick my wipers in the Thursday storm. According to our public works director, we've had more snow already this season than all of last season. Welcome home, indeed!
Classes are over, as of yesterday. Snow was forecasted (and what a mess that all turned out to be!). I drove to school and arrived at 12:05. At 12:30, when I walked into my first class, the students happily announced that school had just been cancelled for the rest of the day.
I made them stay five minutes so they could hear instructions for the final exam (some of them - oddly, the ones with the lowest averages) didn't even want that.
I cleaned up a few things and headed out, joining the other million or so employed people in the Boston metro who had all left work at just the same time. My 45-mile drive took SIX AND ONE HALF HOURS. Almost could've walked instead. The wipers croaked at mile 30 or so. I gotta tell ya, driving in snow with no wipers is damn hard. But I didn't hit anyone or anything, and no one hit me, so it's all good.
Happy Birthday, Dave!!
B went to the State of Insanity (my pet name for CT) today to help his mom Christmas-shop. He should be back in a couple of hours unless he decides to stay over.
I have been cleaning up my office, which has gotten dustier and more packed with stacks of papers over the last four months. Turns out there was a nice rug at the bottom of it all - who knew?!
I dusted, vacuumed, and organized files. I clipped and organized all the newspapers I've been saving with possibly relevant articles for teaching geography. I uploaded some files to Blackboard for school, so except for sample questions for Tuesday's quiz, I'm fairly current in what I've promised students. Then I found some Mortite, and "insulated" my office windows. Then J came over and dealt with the squirrels, phase one. I've also folded Laundry Mountain, so if I can do a little bit of cleanup in the kitchen (it's really gross) our domestic life will be back to normal. Or whatever passes for normal - I think our standards have slipped quite a bit.