Today is Friday. I was told this morning that the number of people on campus seemed low. There is a good reason for this, because the coming Monday is a federal holiday and some students decided to take an extra day off by not coming to school today.
When I went to my class at noon, I clearly sensed the drop in attendance. So, I decided to use instructor's secret weapon, namely, giving a quiz at the end of the class to find out who didn't come to class. But, I had something else on my mind.
I only asked one simple question: Why do we care about El Nino? Explain from the view point of fisheries, in one word, two words, or one sentence. (Note: Today's lecture is on fisheries.) More specifically, I said this is NOT about El Nino and climate change, which we learned earlier (in the semester). The answer key has two words: Peruvian anchoveta.
Only one student wrote down the same two words as I did for the key. One student wrote down three sentences, including the last one on climate change. Another student started his three sentences with climate change, and ended with "Also, it affect(s) anchovies."
What have I learned from these quiz results? How different human brains work!