Exam time

As I write this, a few students in one of my Honors Physics classes are finishing their midterm exam. They don't like me for it, but I don't really care. This is a nice week for teachers; as one of my colleagues said, "When you're teaching, you're always on. You can't do anything without someone noticing. During exam week, I can pick my nose and get away with it." There's no prep for classes, but there is a lot of grading involved, since we need to have all of our grades in by Tuesday. That means we need to have exams graded, entered, and semester grades calculated just 4 days after the last exam. Two of those days are regular days in the classroom, so there's not much grading time.

I have a reputation for giving hard tests, and I'm afraid that this exam will put that reputation in jeopardy. I had three students finish within an hour (including one who usually takes the longest), and at the end of the two hour exam period there were only three students left working on it. In looking over their papers they did pretty well, so I hope they don't think I'm going soft.