Done (almost)

Gave my last final this morning, just got the VERY last one (a student who is an ESL speaker and had multiple finals on one day - so I offered to let her take mine late, "on her own time").

In general, I'm pretty pleased. Grades fell out where I'd "expect" they would based on past performance. I am very happy with my non majors class - 85% of them took my "you really need to study for this final!" exhortation to heart - and they took notes at the review session I did - and a lot of them did really well.

There was one guy - the guy who asked all the questions, who I talked about before - who walked in there and said, "I sat down and figured out I need to get a 77% or better on this to get an A."

Later, grading the exams - running them through the scanner - I saw he got an 83. I did a little spontaneous dance there in the room where the scanner is (I was alone). It makes me happy when someone takes the effort to learn, when they know what they need to do, and they do it. And this is someone who had kind of a rocky start - he didn't do all that well on the first tests and then decided he needed to work with a tutor. (I could tell that it helped - his test scores went up markedly after he started working with the tutor).

I also had a couple people score in the 90s, which is unusual for a comprehensive exam in a non-majors class. (I'm wondering if it maybe was my review session - I hit all the high points, went over all the important topics, starting from the beginning of the semester and tried to tie everything all together). All of the high-scorers were people who had been there that day.

Of course, there were also people who were NOT there that day, and who in fact probably weren't "there" for a good chunk of the class. One guy (one of my 'football heroes') got a 28% on the final.

He's called me. Twice. First to know whether the posted letter grade was, in fact, the final grade for the class and not just the final exam grade. Then to ask whether he REALLY needed to take the class again. (Um...you got an F? And this is a class required for graduation? I think those two conditions make the answer a "yes.")

I had other folks calling me and finally took the phone off the hook (bad ricki! But I needed the quiet just then) while I was figuring up grades for another class.

This afternoon I'm going home to clean my horribly messy house that I haven't cleaned in too long because I've been busy attending to things like e-mailing back people pleading me for extra credit after the class is over.

And also, that way, no one will be able to call me and harass me about their grade - unless they happen to find my home number (which is in the book but is only in there as Surname, FirstInitial so maybe that keeps them from knowing FOR SURE.)

I'm not sure I like the immediacy of online grades- oh, I would have loved it as a student, being able to know right off what I got in a class. But I am not in love with the fact that someone can call you up crying to you less than 15 minutes after you posted their final grade.