Thu, 29 Sep 2011, 01:37

To my students in EE306,

I am back in my office.  I had hoped to get back before the end of the exam
today, but immigration and customs lines at DFW were too absurdly long, and
I was not able to.

I have received a few emails from students who say they were very disappointed
in themselves with respect to their performance on the mid-term today, and as
a result, were beating themselves up over it.

The purpose of this email is to tell you to not beat yourself up too much
over this first midterm.  (It is absolutely okay to beat yourself up, just
NOT too much!)  I am told by many students who have come before you that 
my exams test whether you really understand the concepts and can apply them 
to situations that we did not go over in class.  That is the nature of 
engineering, and with a little practice you will be good at it, and should
actually enjoy it.

If you are one of those who were disappointed today, please consider 
the first mid-term as a wake-up call, something to grow from.  You now know
the difference between what you thought you knew and what you were required
to know.  If you learn from this experience today and move on, the first
mid-term grade will not slow you down.  I tell students every time I teach
this that flunking the first mid-term has little effect on your grade if you 
demonstrate as the semester rolls on that you understand the concepts 
and can use them in new situations.  Not the easiest thing to do, but I have
taught this course many times, and most students do grow as the semester
evolves.  Everyone in the class can still earn an A in the course, regardless
how badly they did today.

So, it is time to tackle the next task.  Your first programming assignment
will be due on Tuesday, October 11, and there is much to do between now and
then.  In class next week, I plan to teach you a lot about the LC-3 and how
to write programs that solve problems on the LC-3.  

In discussion session on Friday, you will be introduced to the Simulator 
and Debugger, so you can start getting comfortable with it.  By the end 
of next week you will be using the Simulator to test and debug your first
LC-3 program.

See you in class on Monday.

Yale Patt