Today was a lab day, and I’m happy to report that the students have achieved perfection. Every fly bottle was beautiful, full of maggots and pupae, and not one hint of contamination among them all. And so many pupae already! This is excellent news, because next week swarms of adult F2 flies will emerge and the students will have to score and count them all to finish this mapping cross.

Score. And count. ALL. Next week’s lab will require extra time to complete, and I let them know that today. It’s been typical to count 10-15,000 flies in the final cross in this class, but I don’t expect that many this year (it’s a small class of only 8 students*), and I don’t grade them on raw numbers but on how well they analyze and interpret the numbers they do get. I think this experiment will be ending on a high note, at least, and the maggoty-side will be over next week, leaving them two weeks to put together a lab report.

I also committed the students to a specific in-class presentations on the 27th of April, the last week of class. We really are winding down.

*8 is an unusually low number of students — we hit a trough in enrollment numbers a few years ago. I wouldn’t mind classes this small every year, but I suppose we need a larger enrollment to sustain the university. I see good signs for the future**: my cell biology course in the Fall is nearly full, and registration isn’t quite over yet.

**I would like to have my final year here, the 2026-2027 academic year, be a bountiful year. I’d like to exit with a good term.