I’m really happy that so many of you were able to attend class this morning! This is such a tricky situation and I think it says a lot about you that you keep showing up.

I’m sorry the technology failed us for the breathing exercise; I really thought that would be a helpful thing for us to try together. Oh well! If you haven’t tried breathing exercises or meditation before and you’re feeling stressed right now (who isn’t?) this might be a good time to try something. Personally, I suffer from anxiety even during normal times and I’ve found that if I can keep up a regular meditation and physical exercise routine, it helps me to feel like I can get through anything. There are lots of free breathing/meditation exercises on YouTube and other places; here’s a mini exercise from the company I subscribe to, if you want to try it on your own.

I hope you are finding ways of trying to stay grounded during this turbulent time. Some people might find comfort in religion or in connecting with friends and family members. Some people are able to meet with their therapists over FaceTime or other apps. Some people are volunteering to help out on the front lines, but even if you’re just playing video games, if it helps you feel less stressed, that’s a good thing. Things look pretty bad right now and they’re probably going to get worse, but then they will get better.

Schedule changes

CUNY is taking another week off from official classes from this Friday, March 27 to Wednesday, April 1. Online classes resume Thursday, April 2. For us, that means that we won’t meet again until April 6.

  • Test #2 will be given on Monday, April 6 (unless CUNY changes the schedule again!). I’ll give details and instructions in a separate post.
  • I’ll hold review sessions during usual class/office hour time next Monday, March 30 and Wednesday, April 1. (If nobody is online at 8am, I might hit snooze again until 9am!)

Spring break has been shortened and is now from April 8-10. If you need to observe religious holidays that no longer fall during spring break, just let me know and we’ll work around it.

Laptops/tablets for students

Next week is called the Recalibration Period for Educational Equity. From what I can tell, the main reason for the pause is so that CUNY can distribute computers for students who need them for their online classes. If you need to borrow one of these devices:

  1. please send me an email so I can put you on one list,
  2. fill out the application here: https://bit.ly/NYCCT24 as well,
  3. fill out the application here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeXUALqOA_hJ7mjFjc28tJ-f-XnhCDD1pLBj_EgNrN4EuySMg/viewform as well.

Last week I posted about different ways to get internet access here.

If you don’t need a computer or internet access yourself but you know a CUNY student who does, please let them know about these resources.

Today’s lesson

It takes Webex a while to generate videos, but as soon as today’s video is ready I’ll post it here. The PDF of my lecture notes and the notes I made during office hours is already posted there. We went over a few more examples showing how to find Taylor polynomials during office hours.

In the future, I’m planning to post the “pre-class prep lessons” the week before the in-class lessons. Then after the in-class lessons I’ll add links to the class videos and my own class notes to the same post. You can see just these posts, organized according to date, by clicking on Pre-class prep lessons in the menu at the top of the OpenLab site.

Credit/no-credit grades

CUNY’s working on a policy that will allow you to select a “credit/no-credit” (sometimes called “pass/fail”) option instead of a letter grade. From the looks of it, you might even be able to make this decision to take the class credit/no credit within 20 days of receiving a letter grade. The university will let students know the details of the new policy and help you understand how this impacts your academic progress and financial aid.

More information is here https://www.cuny.edu/cuny-continuity/cuny-continuity-for-students/#grade-policy