Thursday, March 08, 2007

Powerless: The Aftermath

In addition to a power outage, for the past two days some of my students have been suffering from a time outage, or so they say. I don't know how many times today I've heard some variation on the following plea: "I didn't have time to study because of the power outage so I assume the midterm exam will be postponed."

Okay, let's review: for the past two days students have had no classes to worry about, but somehow that added up to less time to study for the midterm. In my math, less time in class = more time for studying. Maybe my students are using a different kind of math--or maybe when that transformer blew out it caused some serious damage to the space-time continuum.

Yes, midterm exams will be given as scheduled. I e-mailed all my students Tuesday and Wednesday to provide some information about their exams and suggest some strategies for preparation, but of course some of them had trouble accessing their e-mail with the power absent from some parts of campus. Most of my students used their noggins to overcome this disadvantage, discovering that there are many ways to access college e-mail even during a power outage. Others did not. Perhaps they suffered from an ingenuity outage.

Today everything seems to be back to normal: the lights are on, the heat is up, and computers are humming in the background. Time-out is over, people! Let's take those brain cells out for a spin!

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