12/14/2006

A student writes:

        Envelope-to: patt@ece.utexas.edu
        Delivery-date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:43:14 -0600
        Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:45:15 -0600 (CST)
        Subject: Final Exam

        I have another question. I know it's still early because I wrote 
        the final about 3 hours ago but will there be an opportunity to get 
        our final back?
        I like to review my work and see where I made errors. Oh and I thought
        your final was moderately difficult but very FAIR. Thanks for not making
        the program fill in the blanks too hard!

        Thanks,

        <<name withheld to protect the first person to send this email>>

I took a break from our grading session tonight to look at the email, and
indeed there is plenty.  I do not have time to answer all of it right now,
but I will within the next week or so.

I am sharing this one with all of you because I want to encourage you to
work on your other courses right now, rather than obsess with 306.

I will have more thoughts on the whole semester later, but right now,
I at least want you to know my plans vis-a-vis your grades.

We should finish the grading and assign final grades sometime Sunday night.
Your grade on the final exam will be accessible via Blackboard and the 
solution sheet will be on the EE 306 home page Monday at the latest.
Your exams will be in my secretary's office and available for you to look
at at your convenience anytime from next week until the end of January.
The procedure will be for you to visit my secretary's office 541 ENS during
normal working hours, show her your student id and she will hand you your
exam.  You can sit in her office and examine your exam for as long as you
wish.  If you feel any problem was misgraded, you will note that with her,
and she will give me the exam to re-evaluate.  If we misgraded, I will
correct it.  You will not be allowd to take the exam from her office.

Meanwhile, EE 306 is now done.  ...unless we need to fix misgrading, and
it is important for you to look at your exam to help us make sure we did
not make a grading error.  HOWEVER, that can be done anytime between now
and the end of January.  Right now, you should concentrate on your other
courses.  Once you are done with that, you can turn back to 306 if you wish.  
We will still be here.

So, bottom line: Now is the time to put 306 aside and concentrate on your
other courses.  When you are done with that, there will plenty of time to
get back to 306.  Also, it is time, once the work of all your courses is
done, to relax a bit.  A few weeks home should sound very good about now.

I hope you succeeded in 306, and am happy to discuss 306 with you when it
convenient whether you succeeded or not.

Have a great semester break, happy holidays, and I look forward to seeing
you when you get back.

Yale Patt