Thanksgiving

It is the day before Thanksgiving, so of course I am giving an exam today in calculus.  How could I pass up an opportunity like that?  One or two students approached me, asking if they could take the test early (or even better, late) because they "had" to schedule flights home that conflicted with class.  Naturally my response was to tell them that I suppose they "had" to drop the class, since they were missing a test with an inadequate excuse for doing so.

It gave me great joy that one of these students was in fact one of the five miscreants surrounding the imp, Lindsay Johnson.  This year I will be giving thanks that I will no longer have to suffer through Paul Moreno try unsuccessfully make a joke in the middle of class.  Not even his friends could bring themselves to laugh at them out of pity.  Pathetic.

With any luck, more of them will be culled after this test.  I have my guesses as to which ones, as I have been studying their homework as it passes through my hands after the grader has dealt with it.  I have constructed custom tests designed to hit their weaknesses, while looking like mild variants on the two versions the rest of the class will be getting.

The most likely to drop?  Nathan Thompson.  His homework appears to be fairly blatantly copied from Lindsay's.  It's not surprising.  He spends most of class making puppy dog faces at Lindsay.  I doubt she notices, or cares if she does indeed notice.  His pathetic performance on the first test shows that he doesn't make much of an attempt to absorb anything as he does copy.

Beyond that, the next most likely to drop will be Kim Sun.  I get the impression that she could potentially do well, if only she had unlimited time to do everything.  Her homework is meticulously written, a stark contrast to Lindsay's.  Unfortunately for her, when examining her tests, this meticulousness translates to incredibly slow performance.  I believe she left almost a third of the first test blank.  What was there was done well, but that's not nearly enough to succeed.

With any luck, not long after Thanksgiving both of these will be gone, and my life will be quieter and happier.

That brings us to the last two.  Scott Castilleja is difficult to judge.  Like the others, his homework all seems to be based off the same template, which I have come to suspect is Lindsay's.  However, he seems to have a brain on his head, evidenced by his decent performance on the first test and his ability to write his work relatively cleanly and correctly on his homework of his own volition.

Ordinarily, these things would make me suspect he was the main source of intelligence of the group, and all the information disseminated from there.  After all, Lindsay's homework is so sloppy, so messy.  Girls tend to have somewhat better handwriting and organization than boys, but not this one.  Her work will wander all over the page, interspersed with doodles of flowers and cats and nonsense of that sort.

And yet...and yet...her first exam was by far the best of the class, despite the sloppiness.  Worse than that, among this sloppiness, I have seen actual insight.  Some of the techniques and tricks she has used in solving problems have been interesting, more than I would like to admit.  These quirks I have seen pop up on the homework of everyone in the group, but only on her test.  If she weren't such an irritation presence, I would be tempted to put her on the path to greater things.

But I have a duty.  I have been charged with finding talent where I can, even if it is in such an unlikely place.  She will get a very special test.  One that should crush her spirit and her hopes.  If she can survive, she may earn my respect.  Though I think I will need to find a way to temper her indulgences.

Science = Men in white coats

Late last week, Albert Einstein was brought up in the course of class.  I guess it's not too surprising.  After all, he's arguably the most well known intelligent person of the modern age.  At least to people who have no connection whatsoever to intellectual pursuits, or thinking in general.  Unfortunately, he was brought up because a student tried to say he was a famous mathematician.

I corrected them, saying that he was not a mathematician, but a physicist.  The student responded by saying, "Aren't those the same thing?"

I should have let it go.  I should have told myself that surely they were making a simple mistake.  After all, especially historically, physics and mathematics have been very closely intertwined, and some of the best physicists have done great work in mathematics and vice versa.

But no, I wanted to try to educate this poor creature and said, "Those are not the same thing.  That would be like saying a biologist and a geologist were the same, even though one works with rocks, and the other with living things."

So this student.  This student responded, "Well, they do the same job, so they're the same thing."

I didn't have the will to keep the conversation going anymore.  When someone who is legally an adult, who has somehow graduated high school, seems to have as strong of an understanding of what "science" is about as a seven year old child, where do you even begin to try to unravel their ignorance?  I can only guess that this person assumes that any person in a white lab coat and glasses is perfectly interchangeable with any other, and there is no real difference between their jobs.

Wait, I take that back.  The average seven year old child would probably know the difference between biology and geology.  And if they didn't, they would probably be receptive and open to learning how they're different, and may be fascinated to do so.  I should not insult children by comparing them to this waste of brain matter.