In Digital Signal Processing, the professor had tentatively scheduled a second midterm for March 10, the week before Spring Break. He forgot to give the test and we "forgot" to remind him. This is a tiny class and, to our good fortunate, does not include one of those helpful students who raises her hand and asks, "Dr. So-and-So, didn't you say we were going to have [some horrendous assignment] to do for next time?"
During the March 31 class, Dr. DSP remarks, "I see on the schedule we were supposed to have the second midterm a couple weeks ago. And I forgot and—"
"And we forgot to remind you?"
"Yes, so anyway, I guess we'll have to have a take-home. I'll post it next Wednesday and it'll be due in my office on Friday."
Entering a nice state of shock, I mark that in my calendar. I have a math quiz and homework due that Wednesday and a computer science test on Thursday, so it's looking to be one of the worst weeks this semester. By the time this week—the week of all those tests—rolls around, however, the math quiz has been shifted to Friday and Dr. DSP has postponed the midterm to Friday, which means we'll have the whole Easter weekend to work on it and the new DSP homework set due Wednesday. So the "worst week" situation has been effectively pushed three days into the future where it can join forces with the next worst week that has been burgeoning away up there.
Oz has been officially warned that my plans for the weekend revolve entirely around this take-home test. I've already spent three or four hours on it and I'm halfway done maybe, except the last problem involves, among many other things, designing "an IIR filter using an elliptic analog prototype and the bilinear transformation" which is looking like three hours on its own since I'm going to have to teach myself that from the book. Then I have to take more time to check all my work. While I don't mind the open book, open notes, open Matlab, open Internet aspect of the take-home test, I do mind that the professor does not have to consider any time constraints when he makes up the test. I suppose the total time for the take-home doesn't exceed the study time that an in-class test requires, but Augh! I just want to get it over with.
407 words | April 9, 2004 09:54 PM | Ivory tower