Geez, it's been quite a while. A whole month, in fact, thanks mostly to a combination of an abnormally long winter break and subzero temperatures. I had expected to write last Friday, but we were excused from that assignment. I don't mind too much though; I usually procrastinate on these quite a bit regardless, I went from planning on doing these in the afternoon to doing them half asleep at night. Anyways, on to the actual post.
So, last week was largely uneventful. Thursday was all test stuff, which, as I mentioned in the last post, I finished back before break. That basically meant that I got to do nothing for the hour, which was pretty nice, especially since it was the first day back. Friday saw the beginning of the next chapter (5, I think?) and a pretty basic homework assignment that took all of ten minutes to complete. Funnily enough, at least half the class forgot to do it, which is pretty surprising considering just how short and simple it really was. I'd expect a result like that from a particularly difficult or lengthy assignment, not a one-sided worksheet with four questions on it, but whatever. Maybe there were more people that legitimately forgot than I'm assuming there were.
On the subject of forgetfulness, I feel like I should bring something up about the CCC's we're supposed to do after each assignment. Though I didn't say anything in class, I tend to completely forget about them, and it seems infinitely more convenient to just ask what we need help on in class. While that does remove some of the pre-planned structure that I'm guessing you were going for with the whole thing, it does just seem more practical. At this point in the year, the only people really filling the forms out are the ones who actually made it a habit earlier on, and it's a remarkably easy thing to forget if you don't fall in that category. In my (rather limited) experience, the questions that need attention usually wind up getting attention, regardless of whether they were mentioned on the CCC or even brought up in the event that you don't get enough data for it. I've been asked to explain multiple problems that weren't 'officially' listed for any groups to solve, so it seems like it works out in the end. I don't know, my opinion on the subject is obviously skewed, and I tend not to move from my spot in favor of working out each problem at my station, so I may be completely wrong about all of this. But what I'm trying to get at here is that I think it might be best if we tried scrapping the CCC's and just spent that extra minute or so asking what we needed help on, at the cost of one minute less on homework at the end of the hour.
This week was all over finding areas under functions, which, so far, hasn't been too bad. There've been a few things that have stumped me for a little bit, but I've largely figured everything out, to the point where I can't think of any examples of confusing topics right now. That might just be the sleepiness, though, I'm not totally sure. In all seriousness though, this seems like a fairly easy topic, and I don't see myself having a whole lot of trouble outside of remembering the different equations and when to use them. The Mean Value Theorem was even pretty simple, I found myself understanding it pretty quickly (though I don't really think that exploration helped; if anything, it only served to confuse me further until an actual explanation was given) and it doesn't seem like anything that'll give me trouble in the future.
So, here's my obligatory comment about how disjointed and ramble-y this sounds, and my excuse about how I'm tired. Really, I'm quite predictable with my post endings... I'd like to change it up, but I can't be bothered to find a way to do so without sounding like someone else. Anyways (I use that word a lot too, don't I?) that's all for tonight, I'll let you guess when I'll post next.