The Cape Times headline today was about South Africa's economic free fall. GDP is down at an annual rate of 6.4% in the last quarter. Manufacturing and mining are down by 22% and 33% (annual rate over the last quarter), respectively. This is South Africa's first recession in 17 years. The last recession was in 1992, and Tracy and I were here for that one, too. (Are we bad luck?) Pretty challenging stuff for this country.
Mark is doing a classroom group project on Madagascar. His responsibility is the national anthem and currency. Nick is doing the flag and geographical location. Josh is doing clothing, and Philip is doing animals, fish, and the national flower.
I've been dealing with the final exam for my refrigeration class at CPUT. It is a real big hassle. All final exams in every class at all tertiary institutions in South Africa must be "moderated". There are internal and external "moderators", neither of whom should be connected with the subject. After an exam has been "set" (i.e. created by the lecturer), it must be "moderated" (i.e., reviewed) by both an internal "moderator" (i.e., a reviewer from the same institution) and an external "moderator" (i.e., a reviewer from a different institution). The rules say that this must all happen before the exam can be duplicated for the students. Then, the students "write" (i.e., take) the exam in a three-hour time period. Thereafter, the lecturer must "mark" (i.e., grade) the exams.
Next, the lecturer must send the marked exams to the internal moderator who checks to see if the marks are fair. Finally, the exams go to the external moderator who again checks the marks.
It is all a very big hassle, and moderators get paid too little for the work they are asked to do.
But, I had my last class meeting today. It was a simple review session, but several students thanked me for a good semester after class, which was nice.
Tracy has been doing a lot of reading for her upcoming conference. She has over 600 pages to cover before next week.
--Matt