Preface
It’s been almost a month since my last weekly post. Getting pressured by friends to post more and more, so I have to get back to writing. Even though it’s called “Weekly Post,” I can’t write every week. Instead of fixed updates, “write when I want to” fits my rhythm better.
Tutoring Center
Been at the tutoring center for almost three months now. The pay’s good and the work’s light, so I’ll probably keep doing it short-term.
Before Midterms
High school students are all the same — not many questions usually, but right before midterms, they all come surging in. The power of last-minute cramming is real — almost everyone asks questions. We were the same back when we took midterms. The past exam papers they give out now have almost identical formatting to what I used to write, except the teacher’s version now has watermarks, the one from Xing-Fu didn’t. Not saying I miss those exam paper days, but seeing them write triggers dead memories in my brain. We used to categorize the exam papers:
Jian-Zhong, Yi-Zhong, Xiong-Zhong, Nan-Yi-Zhong, Wuling, Teacher-Fu-Zhong: Hard problems, can’t think of solutions
Bei-Yi-Nu, Zhong-Nu-Nu: Really ugly numbers, need technique to calculate
Wen-Hua, Xing-Fu: About the same as actual difficulty
other:Warm-up exam papers
Maybe I categorized them too clearly in my subconscious — now seeing the girls’ school papers… really don’t want to touch them. Don’t ask me!
These Things Should I Teach or Not
Spending time at the tutoring center, I’ve started thinking: how should I teach them? Some things feel weird to teach, but not teaching also feels wrong.
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Geogebra
This is a graphing software — input an equation and see what the graph looks like. Seems like nobody at the tutoring center knows about this. Every time I encounter a problem with a too-complex graph, I hesitate: should I just draw it on the tablet, or teach them to sketch an approximation?
From an exam perspective, of course you can’t use this software. But it’s hard to draw accurately without actually seeing what the graph looks like. Current approach — if I’m too lazy to draw, I use Geogebra. Might formally introduce it to them later. -
Photomath
Super calculator. , even matrices — basically if you can type it, it can calculate1, and it shows full steps. I’ve used it in my tutoring, but haven’t introduced it publicly — afraid they’ll become too dependent and stop thinking. Some people learn from the steps, but more people just — copy the answers.
Gold Shield Award
Qualifiers: 30 multiple choice, a lot of reverse problems won’t write. Going in is just happy guessing, and the result is expected — didn’t make it to finals. Walking out of the exam, I knew it would be like this, just haven’t met my advisor yet to tell them. A Reverse a day keeps the zero-days away. Try again during winter break. Recent days, doing reverse AND studying at the same time is really difficult.
Guitar Club
Starting to get busy for Xmas night. This time I’m assigned to stage crew — basically handling the sound board and setting up instruments. Since I have free time, I opened three songs. This time three lead guitar songs, two have solos, hope I can practice enough. Because of the typhoon, missed one rehearsal opportunity — so everyone’s “one rehearsal to decide everything” next week needs to work hard.
Club Class
Next week it’s my turn to teach club class. Teaching people who haven’t learned guitar… honestly a bit nervous. To know how to teach, I’ve been sitting in on previous club classes. After watching, found out — watching doesn’t help, need to actually be up there to know what to do, then adapt. Actually while observing from below, noticed there’s a huge skill gap. Some are experienced, some are halfway, some are touching guitar for the first time. To accommodate everyone, decided to teach Mayday’s Embrace2. The whole song only has four chords, easy fingering, not asking for much — hope everyone can make a sound within two hours.
Xmas Night Info
- Location: NCHU Small Chapel
- Time: 12/02 (Tue) 18:30 - 21:30
Past Exam System
This week Each Chen got the NCHU Applied Math Past Exam System working. I only did the favicon, changed the frontend background, and provided a bunch of past exams. Next, drawing the system’s Social Card. Plain English — that preview image that shows when you share a link. Current idea: stick figures vs math — we’re the stick figures getting beaten all over the place by math. One day when we’ve read enough math, can fight back at the big monster, we graduate. Still haven’t visualized this image yet, will draw it in these few days.
Keyboard
My L key’s getting less responsive lately. Has big impact on me. Ever since I set up Affine, almost all my notes are on it. Without a laptop, basically can’t study. Also, my typing speed got faster, but haven’t had time to test at typing club. Getting back to the topic — my L key is really broken. If pressed too light, no character appears. With normal force, about 70% success rate. Planning to get an external mechanical keyboard, better feel. Saw one I liked at Dunhuang before — Logi Pop Keys.
Actually noticed it when school started. Now I actually need it. So I went to Nova, planning to look around carefully, maybe see other things I like. Nope — walked a whole circle, still didn’t see what I wanted, or too expensive. Ended up going back to school library. The result is
The purple one’s discontinued.
Giving up, keeping the original — only magenta and one yellow-black left, might as well not switch.
RSS
Because I don’t have the habit of watching news, completely missed the typhoon news this time. That day I was just asking a senior for past exam questions:
You have past exams?
：No
We’re doomed
：You can pray for typhoon holiday
What? There’s a typhoon?! I was completely like being offline. Though November shouldn’t really have typhoons, but one came and I had no idea. Because my way of getting info is all through RSS. Of course, I looked for Central Deception Agency3 to see if they have RSS. They actually do:
Here.
Each area has its own RSS — alerts, warnings, including typhoons, earthquakes, heavy rain, low temperature, fog, etc., issued or lifted.
No more watching news — it automatically sends weekly weather forecast, today’s weather, rain probability every day. Immediately subscribed to Taichung’s, bye news.
