For my first philosophy class I had three students. For my first programming class, fifty-five.

The philosophy folks had a mixup with the scheduling, so that almost everyone from both my group and Robert’s group ended up going to his class. We sorted out the problem, more or less, so my second class had … five.1

There are two ways to look at this. If I gain two students every lecture, by the end of the course I’ll have a class of 49. (12 weeks, two lectures per week, starting with 3 in the first class.) On the other hand, here’s a more optimistic projection: between the first lecture on Monday and the second on Wednesday I gained two students. That’s a growth rate of one student per day. So by the final exam (December 18) I will have … slightly over 100. Either way, I’m going to need to ask for a larger room.

In the programming course, on the other hand, the first working session had folks sitting on the windowsills. Maybe I can convince some of them to take up philosophy?

Notes:

  1. This is actually fine by me. With so few in the class we can afford to stop whenever someone hasn’t understood something, or go a bit more into detail if someone asks an interesting ‘advanced’ question. The course coordinator objects though: she’s teaching 40, and the room is only supposed to fit 35. [↪]