Today is Monday. Week 10 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 11
will begin tomorrow - and those assignments are available now if
you want to get started.
Grading and points. Some people have been asking me about the points and grading, so let me refer you again to this Grading Information
chart which can help you estimate what kind of grade you are headed
for at this time. In short, you need 410 points to get an A, 360 points
to get a B, and 320 points to get a C. When you get the number of
points you need, you are done! It is fine with me if you decide to
stop doing work for the class whenever you have the grade you want
to receive (many of you are taking this class for Gen. Ed.
requirements, which means you just need a C to get graduation
credit). My only request is that you please let me know when you are done so I can record the final grade for you in the Gradebook.
Mix and match points. Now
that there are just five weeks of the semester left (Weeks
11-12-13-14-15), you might want to plan to do some "mix and match" in
terms of just which assignments you want to complete this semester
to get the points you need for the grade you want to get. 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.
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. You can check the contents of the stack
to make sure I received your assignment. As usual, I will be
reading and replying to the assignments in the order they were
turned in, starting with the ones that were turned in on Friday
afternoon, then the Storybooks from Saturday, and then finally
assignments turned in on Sunday and on Monday.
Monday Events on Campus. As Part of the Activism in Latin America Symposium, there will be a showing of "The Milk of Sorrow" (a film from Peru, and the first film from Peru to be nominated for an Academy Award) at 7PM in Meacham Auditorium (time-location-details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.
April 1: April Fool's Day Hoaxes. Happy April Fool's Day! There is a wonderful article in Wikipedia
about the many famous April Fool's Day Hoaxes over the years. One of
my favorites is this one from National Public Radio in 2007, when they
ran a sponsor announcement for Soylent Green (yes, one of my favorite movies of all time): "Support
for NPR comes from the Soylent Corporation, manufacturing protein-rich
food products in a variety of colors. Soylent Green is People." You can listen to the NPR audio
of the Soylent Green announcement in their archives (it comes at the 1:29 moment in the segment, after they discuss the other April Fool's
hoaxes they ran that year).