Math Blues

I find myself getting extremely irritated at some of the younger kids these days because of their lazy attitudes and loud-mouthed disrespect. Yesterday my Math 100 teacher "blew her top," so to speak. She is VERY strict about staying in the classroom until 9:15 sharp, which, in my opinion, is borderline unreasonable, especially if she's not lecturing and all we're doing is sitting there watching the clock. Some kids need to catch the shuttle and never make it in time. But anyway, it doesn't matter how many times she tells the class we must stay till 9:15, these kids are always begging...pushing... not making good use of the time she gives us in class to work on homework. Well, this morning, after repeatedly telling the class "hot shot" to quiet down, she all at once lost it. She said, "You people are not appreciative of the time I give you to work on assignments in class! That's fine. If this is just a party time for you, I'll just lecture, lecture, lecture. And I won't care if you get it or not!" She ended it by angrily telling the class to just "leave." It was five minutes early, so we knew she was really mad.

Well, I for one, found this to be very annoying. I need that time in class desperately. I don't have much time for homework outside of class, and any time I can get it done in class is so helpful. I am predicting that she will increase the homework load just for spite. Argh. She's a math grad student and assumes we all are too. She gets irritated when we don't get a concept. And I'm very alarmed at the thought of her not caring if "we get it or not." I need a good base in the Math 100 stuff if I am to pass Math 116! And all because of a couple of kids... the whole class suffers. Sigh.

Well, "David" entered the room this morning, loud as usual. He was gabbing with another student about how some other students had griped at him about ruining it for everybody. The students all trickled in, and Ms. A entered the room right on time. I didn’t know what to expect after yesterday morning’s tirade, but I certainly wasn’t expecting David to say quite loudly, "Are you feeling better this morning, Ms. A?" (*bang head on wall*) This quite clearly proved my buddy William’s theory that "not a one of us in this class is a rocket scientist." It seems, however, that some of us are more NOT than others. (William is one of the three non-traditional students in the class. We often compare notes and commiserate about the class dynamics.)

Ms. A said, "What?" "I asked you a question," said David. (Doesn’t he know when to stop??) "I asked how you were feeling this morning," he repeated. "Are you still mad at me?" She obviously was feeling better this morning because she just smiled tightly and began class. Things went much better, although she had to say very pointedly at one point, "David, I do not want to hear the answers from this side of the class. I want to hear the answers from the other half of the classroom." Then she waited expectantly to hear what our half of the classroom had to say. Dead silence. We just looked at her with glassy eyes until about two of us squeaked out in our insect voices, "Negative five." (Yay for our team!!) A little later, she said, "I am not hearing anything from that side of the class. Are you getting this? Are you following me?" Several mute nods. And later still, "David! I am talking to Rebecca." Oh.

I managed to pull my quarterly trick of oversleeping this morning. When Sara called at 6:35 a.m. to warn us that our new renters are moving in today, I finally sensed that my short nights had at last caught up with me. I usually leave the house at 6:30 at the latest. Thank goodness Sharon got up and answered the phone because I did NOT have time to talk. It was rather useless, but I did grab my phone with the dead battery and kept trying to punch it on all the way in to my closet. Talk about swift moves... I was ready 10-12 minutes after being roused. I had a few more lumps in my hair than I normally plan to have, but overall, I was basically presentable. Thank goodness that parking places are not nearly so high in demand on Fridays. God even saved my usual parking space for me even though I was fifteen minutes later than usual.

I went with Dee to the teeny, tiny town of Marrow Bone, KY, this evening to visit a patient and his lady friend. Dee has befriended this lady, and we were invited to come and spend the evening with her. It took about an hour and fifteen minutes from Bowling Green. She fed us supper, and this proved to be an endurance test of sorts. She made quesadillas for us and some sort of southwestern salad that tricked the living daylights out of us. It was comprised of cherry tomatoes, black beans, corn, onions, some kind of green leaf thingys, and ranch dressing. It looked awful. And it tasted... well, different. The green leaf gave it a flavor that I just about couldn’t stomach. I managed to swallow the leaves, but picked out all my onions and made a discreet pile on the side of my plate. Dee couldn’t stand the leaf things either, so unbeknownst to me, she was spitting them into her napkin and was also making a pile of them on her plate.

We got into quite the conversation, including a discussion of the Mrs.’s past life as a Jehovah’s Witness. We were asking the Mr. some questions, and he began to talk about the kids he has nothing to do with. He says his son looks Hispanic and nothing whatsoever like him. "Was your wife Hispanic?" I asked. "I don’t know," he said. "I can’t remember what she looked like." Dee and I both about choked on our food at that. He was married to the woman for nine years, and he can’t even remember what she looked like. He said he paid for DNA testing recently just to make sure his son is his, and it came back as 99%. I shall ponder over that one for a while.