Monday, February 25

Today is Monday, and Week 6 of the class is now over. Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Week 7 will begin tomorrow - and those assignments are available now if you want to get started.

Grading
. Now that we have finished Week 6 of the semester, there have been 180 points of required work. You can consult this chart to get an indication of how you are doing in the class overall: if you have around 165 points (155 points if your Week 6 Storybook has not been graded yet), you are headed for an A; if you have around 145 points (135 points), you are headed for a B; if you have around 125 points (115 points), you are headed for a C; with less than 125, you are in danger of failing the class. There are still 9 weeks left in the semester (i.e. Weeks 7 through 15), which gives you plenty of time to improve your grade if you are not on track for the grade you want. Just make sure you budget time to do more of the assigned work and, if you do miss an assignment, make sure you complete some extra credit points to make up for it.

Storybook stack.
As always on Monday, I will have a huge bunch of assignments in the Storybook stack that were turned in over the weekend or on Monday morning. The first thing I will do on Monday morning when I get to work is to update the list of items in the Storybook stack. So, after 9AM or so on Monday, you will be able to check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment. I will be reading and replying to the assignments in the order they were turned in.

My Monday schedule. I will be out of the office for part of the day Monday (picking up my new glasses at the optometrist - I am very near-sighted and new glasses make the world much more clear for me every time!), so I will not be as quick to reply to emails but I will certainly be able to get back to you by the end of the day in response to any questions you have or problems that have come up.

Monday Events on Campus. At 12PM in 160 Hester Hall Anastasiia Grynko will be giving a lecture on "Media Freedom and Democracy in Ukraine: Where Old Values and New Rules Clash" (time/location/details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

February 25: Sangha Day. Today is the Buddhist holiday known as Sangha Day; it is also known as Fourfold Assembly or Magha Puja Day.  You can read more about the holiday at this BBC website and at Wikipedia. The holiday commemorates an event when followers of the Buddha came to see him at the full moon of the Indian month of Magha, as shown in the painting below; this year, it occurs on February 25.