A Little Behind

It’s already March and I’ve only finished reading one small book so far this year, a little behind my at-least-one-book-per-month target. I also only managed a measly ten books last year. As it is, I’m not even halfway through The Chronicles of Narnia, currently reading the third book, The Horse and His Boy.

Hopefully I’ll be able to finish the book by the end of the month so I can move on to The Children of Hurin and that Gundam novel. In the meantime, there are already a few books I’m eyeing to order soon; like David Weber’s sequel to Off Armageddon Reef, By Schism Rent Asunder that is coming out in July, as well as John Scalzi’s latest Zoe’s Tale due to be released in August.

:P

I’m also a little behind with my classes. There are only two weeks left in the semester. I’m current with the teaching, but no thanks to the many public holidays falling on either Tuesday or Thursday during the semester, I wasn’t able to give the students the number of quizzes I wanted to.

At the same time, they are worried about their standing grades – the average score for the mid-semester test was just below the passing mark. I didn’t think that the test was too difficult. Alas, I think I better come up with something to help them improve their grades over this weekend.

:P

Apparently, many of the students who want to do practical training during the coming long holiday didn’t write their own letters to the organizations they apply to. Instead, they just sent my reference letter – just my reference letter – along with their résumé. No wonder I keep getting all those replies. Our practical training program is optional, so students are supposed to find and arrange their own placements. But many claimed not to know how to write their own letters.

“How do I write the application letter?”

“What should I put in the letter?”

Come on, weren’t there enough letter-writing exercises in high school? I guess between format-less emails and abbreviated text messages nobody remembers how to write a proper letter anymore.

By the way, some of the letters I received from the companies and organizations also contained the same glaring grammatical mistakes our students typically make. I guess that means that our students aren’t all that bad.

:P