Today is Thursday of WEEK 11 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 10 Storybook assignment yet, you have UNTIL NOON today to that in for partial credit. For those of you in Myth-Folklore or World Lit, Thursday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Wednesday. (Indian Epics has no Wednesday assignments, so there is no Thursday morning grace period.)
Finishing the class early. One person in the Indian Epics class has reached 410 points so he is finished with a grade of A. Very exciting! You'll see that in the Gradebook there is an item marked "Final Grade." That is where I will record your grade for the class when you let me know you have completed the number of points you need: 410 for an A, 360 for a B, 320 for a C. It's entirely up to you what grade you want to finish with in the class. There is no need to apologize for stopping out with a grade of B or C. Whatever grade you decide to stop with is fine with me!
Storybook Stack. There are still quite a few Storybook assignments in the stack and I am making my way through them in the order that they were turned in. If you turned something in on Sunday, you should have comments back from me already. If you turned something in later than Sunday (on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday), it is probably still in the stack. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.
Mix and match points. Several people have written to me with questions about mix-and-match strategies, so I thought I should repeat this announcement. There is no special requirement about which assignments you choose to do or not do as the semster comes to a close, provided that you get the total points you need. You can focus on your Storybook, you can pick and choose which reading assignments and quizzes you want to do - it's really up to you. So, based on the assignments you enjoy most/least in the class, you can certainly skip some assignments, provided that you end up with the points you need at the end. My only recommendation is that you do this cautiously. You don't want to skip so many assignments that you end up not getting the points you need for your desired grade.
April 9: Birthday of Tom Lehrer. Today, April 9, is the birthday of Tom Lehrer, an American mathematician and composer of some very funny satirical songs. If you have never experienced the joy of Tom Lehrer's incredible sense of humor, I recommend checking out the many Tom Lehrer songs and videos at YouTube.com. One of his most famous songs, naming all the elements, is available as a great Flash animation here: Tom Lehrer's Elements song. In addition to math and science songs and some great political satire, Lehrer also wrote a mythology song about Oedipus Rex: "There once lived a man named Oedipus Rex. / You may have heard about his odd complex. / His name appears in Freud's index / 'cause he loved his mother..." HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TOM LEHRER!
