A quick thought for a busy October

October at Woodberry Forest is "death month" -- two parents' weekends (one for upperclassmen, one for lowerclassmen), grades and comments due, and teaching the heart of a front-loaded physics program lead to exhaustion. I actually asked IN to duty last night so I would stay awake long enough to grade my first general physics test.

So while I don't even have time for postseason baseball in October -- who does, when the games go on for 4.5 hours -- I can at least post a quick exchange from last Saturday's general physics class.

I brought out the classroom response system, the "clickers," because it was 8:00 on a Saturday morning. I gave everyone a velocity-time graph, and asked questions about it: "During which time interval(s) is the car speeding up?" "During which time interval(s) is the car traveling south?" I divided everyone into teams of two, giving each group a clicker.

Elliott asked, as someone all-too-often does: "So, are you going to count this for a grade?"

My stock response, which this class heard for the first time: "Why? Are you going to take it more or less seriously depending on my answer?" Elliott wisely kept his mouth shut.

There's a moral to that story, but I'm too exhausted this morning to figure out what it is. Good luck surviving your own October.

GCJ