Surviving Night Classes

I'm in the homestretch of my summer courses, meaning that I only have 4 weeks left of my 4-days-a-week, 3 hours and 20 minutes night class. Phew. For real ya'll, I'm tired. Luckily I like math, or this would really suck.

Except you would expect this type of class to fly by. After all, it's only a 5 week course, and the first summer session I took went by in the blink of an eye. In reality, this class is draaaagggging because, apparently, no one else has ever heard of a pre-requisite. On the first day of class one girl raised her hand and very loudly announced that she hadn't had math in 7 years, and that she needed to know what subjects to brush up on.

Trigonometry. This is why we're all here.

OK, I admit it, I had a very bad, judgey moment. If you haven't had math in 7 years, you should not be in this class. Period. When I returned to college I hadn't had math in over 7 years and so I started at the bottom and worked my butt off to get to the level I'm at now, and instead of moving forward I'm stuck in a class with people who don't understand how to put all the terms of a function under the same denominator.

But my saving grace has been my teacher who, with infinitely better fashion sense and a masters in electrical engineering, is hilarious. During the half hour intervals in which she has to re-explain all of the principles that should have been learned in college algebra, I spend my time doodling in the margins of my notebook, jotting down notes for stories, and writing down all of the funny things my teacher says.

For best effect, please read in a heavy Greek accent.

Wisdom from my Precalculus Teacher

"If you could be a number you should be zero. It's chaos! Multiply by zero, it annihilates everything. Divide by zero, BOOM! Everything blows up."

"The circle is your friend. You're gonna love that little circle. Girls you want someone to treat you right? Get a circle."

"I try to tell her, but I'm 30 and she's 11, you try telling her she's not the boss."

"When we get to trigonometry that's party time. That's time to bring the pizza and beer."

"It's all just stuff. Just this is X stuff and this is Y stuff."

"Be careful because these look very much the same. This is a drunk 8. When 8 becomes drunk, it falls down and becomes infinity."

"'Hey brother, you have some weed?' And brother does, because it's the 60s."

Hard Work Trumps Talent

I returned to school after we moved to Tucson, and I'm currently completing my associate of science before I transfer to U of A next fall to study Astronomy and Physics with a minor in Astrobiology.

And no, I’m not super duper smart.

OK maybe just a little.

But I get that a lot. The, “Oh, but you’re just good at math,” from classmates and from people who find out what I’m studying. And you know what? It drives me freaking crazy.

I am not inherently a math genius nor am I the world’s greatest up-and-coming scientist, but I work, and I work hard. When my younger classmates (who knew that going back to school at 26 would make you the oldest in most of your classes?) ask how I pull my grades off I tell them: I. Work. Hard.

I would love to ask the tutoring center on campus to pull up the hours I’ve spent studying in there since Fall 2014.

But the point is, talent and inclination can only get you so far. Just because you picked up on your multiplication tables easily doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to graph quadratic functions without putting a little legwork in.

The same goes for writing. Admittedly, writing really is something that I feel inherently good at, but that doesn’t mean that I get a free pass to ho-hum about and not take my craft seriously. Left unused my words easily become dull and blocky, and plot? What plot?

Your mom wasn’t lying, practice really does make perfect, and if going back to school has taught me anything, it’s that the hard worker will almost always come out ahead.

…which sounds kind of cocky, but whatever.