Midterms and 2 weeks of merge schedule changes

[Jeffrey Warren]

Hi, all - we have a couple GSoC things coming up -- midterms, from the 20-27th, and a couple weeks when I won't be as available on a regular schedule. 

## Merge schedule

From Monday the 27th until Friday the 1st of July, I will be unavailable and won't be merging any pull requests. This will mainly concern Jitesh, Ananyo, and Lalith, as Richard is the only contributor on his repository and Ujitha works with David and Bryan. Please continue work as usual; while I won't be merging, I also won't be adding to the codebase, so it'll just be a week freeze to the master branch. 

From Jun 18-26, I will be merging, and hope to do this on Tuesday and Thursday, instead of the usual Tuesday/Friday. I'll be teaching a workshop and may have to work at odd hours to make this work. As a result, I may not have as much ability to troubleshoot as I usually do, and may defer merges rather than try to tweak them, so please do your best to have your work in a truly ready state by the time I review it. Thanks for your patience!

## Midterms

Each student needs only one mentor (and no more) to fill out a midterm. The midterms *must* be completed by the 27th, and if I don't see one by the 26th, I will fill them out myself. That said, I'd like to ask David to lead the midterm for Ujitha, and I can take lead on the remaining ones -- other mentors, please email me with comments or input on your students' work and I'll prepare a single submission for each.

Note that your input doesn't have to be code-focused. We are lucky to have some good coders this summer, and part of what we look for in students is their ability to communicate with the community, to present their ideas clearly, and to stay in good contact with the PL dev community. 

The midterm questions are listed below, for reference. Please do NOT send comments to this thread -- email me directly. Thanks!

Best,

Jeff

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Preview of the midterm evaluation questions:
(all questions are required)

How many years have you participated in GSoC as a Mentor or Org Admin?

When did you first communicate with your student?

Before orgs were announced
Between orgs announced and start of student application period
Between start of student application period and students announced
After students were announced
Not sure

How often do you and your student communicate?

Daily
Twice a week
Once a week
Twice a month
Once a month

How do you communicate with your mentor(s)?

1:1 Instant Messaging
IRC or other group chat
Video Chat
Voice Chat
Private Emails
Mailing Lists
Blog Posts
In person
Other (fill in answer)

How many hours a week do you spend on “Project name” per week?

Enter the average number of hours per week. Limit it to only this particular project.

How many total hours do you spend on GSoC per week?

Enter the average number of hours per week. It should include all GSoC related time.

How often do you require status updates from your student?

Daily
Every few days
Weekly
Only when explicitly requested
Never

Rate the quality of the student’s interactions with the project mentor:

Very bad
Bad
Okay
Good
Excellent

Please rate the quality of the student’s interactions with the community:

Very bad
Bad
Okay
Good
Excellent

Is the student on track to complete their project?

The student has already completed the project
The student is ahead of schedule
The student is on schedule
The student is behind the schedule
Not sure

What is the quality of code/work the student has produced thus far?

Very bad
Bad
Okay
Good
Excellent

For the midterm evaluation should the student pass or fail?

Pass
Fail

Feedback for student (This content will be shared with the student)

We suggest you include one thing they're doing well (with examples) and one area where they could improve (with a suggestion for how.)

Anything else you’d like to tell us?