Week Eight

            This is the eight week of class, which marks the middle of the semester, as well as spring break occurring. My experience of class for the week was incomplete, since I was absent Friday. However, as I said previously it is a good policy to have to email your professor in advance when you are going to be absent and you know ahead of time. I did so and Professor Downing was more than fair, very generous in actuality, in his response to it. So that in and of itself reemphasized how much the professor cares about his students and how respect and politeness can go both ways.

            This week also marks the start of the group project and thus far it has been interesting, not necessarily in a good way. The group itself is working fine, it seems to be good. The “interesting” part is in the attempt at collaborating between groups, where Professor Downing was right when he said how hard it was to try and organize all the groups to accept a single schema. But that was to be expected since trying to unify eight groups is fairly difficult. Anyways, my group by itself is just fine. The professor on the first day made us write down the numbers of those sitting by us in an attempt to get people to talk, which worked fairly well with regards to creating a group. It let us contact some people we talked to to create a group, since we knew a bit about one another to help facilitate working together.

            Other than the group stuff, the week consisted of discussing the project and a very thorough look at joins. Not to get into detail on class material, it just reemphasized how much he wants his students to understand the material. He will go in-depth into the material to literally beat the point across till it is absolutely clear, which is not a bad teaching style. It works for those who need to see examples, whereas it is a tad tedious for those who get it the first time, but the needs of the many usually outweigh the few in this regard which is fine.