Quiz days.

I give three in-class quizzes, each worth 5% of their grade. I tell them at the beginning of the quarter that the purpose of the quizzes is to make sure that most of them come to class at least three times during the quarter. Everyone gets one point just for putting their name on their quiz paper. If they actually know the material, more points follow.

I gave the last quiz of the quarter last week. As usual, attendence was noticeably better than for any other day of the quarter. However, after I collected the quiz papers, a handful of people got up and walked out. Like I wouldn't notice that they were leaving. They are invisible.

Moments like these make me crazy. After spending so much time putting these lectures together, drawing pictures, finding data sets, developing the overheads... What more can I do, except teach something else? I try to tell myself that it wouldn't matter, that no matter how good/exciting/engaging/dynamic their instructor was, they would still get up and walk out of a statistics lecture.

After the humiliation, I have to smile, thinking about what they'll suffer when they get a really bad statistics instructor. And it will happen, for all of them that go on to graduate school. I just wish I could be there to see it.