Final All-Academy Gathering

As a follow-up to yesterday, I sent some of my students my favorites quiz today and after talking with one student, it really hit me how difficult this quiz would be for them. I just put it up on Facebook to see how my various groups of friends would do and my guess is that my Middlebrook/IT Honors social circle will perform the best. Now that I think about it, I might just wait to post the results for next Tuesday.

TC

I know that I joked about it a couple of days, but today really had the "this is the last time this will happen" feelings. We had all the students gather at the union for ELMS presentations from about half of the groups. I'm going to pretend everyone was there and mentally engaged in the event, but in all seriousness, that hour was the last time that all of the students will be together. Since many students don't have class on Friday, we are having first-year students move out as early as tomorrow afternoon. The first-year students are allowed to stay until Saturday morning, but I don't blame the families that want to pick their son/daughter up early, especially for the students who are doing summer research.

The ELMS presentations went pretty well, although apparently the ballroom was just getting set up when the students started to filter over for the event. Both of the ELMS I supervised presented (the FIRST Robotics team with their robot and the RoboCode programming group), and I was happy with how both groups performed. It was also nice that the FIRST Robotics group did bring the robot to the union, so we could really show off the fruit of their labors. After the presentations were all done, I drove the robot a little bit and I felt like I was doing fairly well, especially while the robot was on the other end of the ballroom going between tables.

I met with the dean to go over my PowerPoint presentations again (for Friday's graduation banquet). I was a little anxious when he started to go through each slide (one presentation is over 120 slides long), but overall, he seemed pleased with how things are looking. I had a few items to add to my 'to do before it's finished' list, but all of those tasks seem reasonable. If anything, I'll have to see how quickly the students respond to the emails I send out.

Since it is the end of the year, the yearbook has been busy getting everything in order. The most recent burst of activity was with senior superlatives as well as the students that are most like each RC. All of those awards are voted on by the students, so it's interesting to see how some awards turn out. The student that was voted most like me wasn't a surprise - he's one of the guys that has used my apartment as a second room for studying and video games, including playing through Bioshock this semester. It was interesting to note that he was the only first-year student to get a "most like an RC" award. Another interesting tidbit was that the runner-up for "most like RC Matt" was the (female) Robotics president who has been the biggest fan of Acadacathalonomania and waffle days. Now that I look at the list, there is only one female student voted "most like an RC", despite there being 3 female RCs and 2 male RCs. Oh well, what the students vote on, right?

Okay, speaking of RCs, we know who is joining the staff next year! Part of yesterday's afternoon meeting was spent deliberating over the four candidates and today, our two picks accepted the job offer. (As another RC can vouch for me, I called it in terms of which parts of the staff would recommend which candidates.) I won't stay on this topic long, but I'm definitely excited for next year, even though I'll be sad to see the last two RCs that have been here with me the whole time go.

During my desk shift, I was able to grade all the items the Acadacathalonomania teams turned in on Sunday. All that's left is the electronic files (i.e. pictures and videos), but I'm pretty sure I know the final ranking already. Even still, it will be nice see what ideas the students thought of and captured on film.

TC

Even though it wasn't a Tuesday, I didn't spend much time thinking about the holidays. May is National Photo Month and with the ELMS presentation, the subsequent all-Academy photo, and senior superlatives, a lot of photos were taken today. I definitely need to get back into the habit of taking and posting photos, even if they aren't self-portraits.

If I didn't say this already, you should be prepared for this type of response for the next couple of days since I'll be quite focused on graduation and moving students out of the building. At least there's one on Friday that seems quite fitting with our building and the hustle and bustle of move out.

TC

Alright, bed time. I don't have any students scheduled to move out until around lunchtime, but I'm sure I'll be bouncing around the building all day tomorrow. Stay healthy and DFTBA.