I’m watching that history of noodles video, and they mention a sweet layered pasta dish. So, I’m wondering, is phylo a pasta?
I took calc in high school and then didn’t place out of “high school math” (whatever that was) when my university gave all incoming freshmen their own standardized tests. And I placed into honors Chemistry (
) and entirely out of my foreign language requirement in one language and into an honors class in another (if i wanted to take it as an elective). Go figure. All I’ve done for many years is arithmetic in my head. Which I’m good at.
3 Likes
That’s become like a strange form of magic . . . so often it baffles people when you come up with a number and they react with a stunned “How’d you do that?”
4 Likes
My roomate is that way, also excells at sudoku.
I am more letter oriented, crossword and Jumble puzzles.
I’m weird . . . I enjoy both crosswords and sudokus. A recent hospital stay revealed puzzles are also an anomaly, fascinating both nurses and doctors alike. (Obviously these are people who have never been subjected to daytime tv–or primetime for that matter.)
2 Likes
I do the NYT crossword puzzle every day. I had a multi year streak going … until one day I got distracted and forgot to finish the puzzle. So I started doing them one day behind; that way I’d never get caught up in the streak thing again.
4 Likes
*roommate 
The NYT puzzles (wordle, connections, mini, spelling bee) are my morning coffee entertainment.
6 Likes
I had the same problem, but I blamed it on my 9 year Army hiatus. So they placed me in an algebra-trig combo class that would have wrecked my entire schedule. The degree program was already 138 semester hours and adding this 5-hour class wasn’t going to be easy, but also the required calc sequence 1-2-3-DiffEQ was only offered in order fall-then-spring-then- (except calc 3 was also offered summers). So I’d have been completely screwed.
I went in and pleaded with the guidance counselor, explaining that I pick maths up as I need it then lose it again, and that I’d have no trouble getting back into the swing by starting in calc. He got tired of me bugging him and called the Math Dept, who said they could lay out a summer study guide.
So he moved me to calc with the comment, “I won’t have to see you fail because my wife got a job at Princeton and I’m following her there!”
4 Likes
Guidance counselors … I’m sure you kept him apprised of your life’s path after he left. 
I had a similar go-to with a sub-dean in college. I won.
Am I the only one who wants to know whether you passed?
Oh, I forgot that part. Yes, got an A in all the calc and matrix math classes, but not in differential equations where I got a C.
By then I was being offered more work slots and skipped a lot of classes, and his class was Tu-Th afternoons where the clinic I worked was chronically short handed.
Plus I was turned off by the prof, so it was easy to make excuses. Or rather turned off by the department management who should have figured out years and years prior that he was no longer able to effectively teach the class.
4 Likes
It looks like a double rainbow?
2 Likes
I was a top student in math up until Calculus, writing national math contests and whatnot.
I dropped Calculus in my Senior year, then enrolled again in my second year of university, then dropped it again.
My math teacher uncle brings up that I dropped Calculus (in 1992), 4 or 5 times a year.
I bring up that I can calculate tip faster than he can. He’s a cheap tipper, loves Math, and looks down on Arithmetic.
I was happy to discover calculus had a use I could relate to: calculating the area of an irregularly shaped object. Other than that … 
. I didn’t become a physicist.
1 Like
I like to remind my math teacher uncle that Spanish is the most useful subject I took in high school.
1 Like
My math teacher has been pushing up daisies for a long time. Universally disliked.
1 Like
I loved my Calculus teacher in high school, despite ultimately dropping the class. I was a slacker my last year of high school and she (the Calculus teacher) tried to help. The Physics teacher became unsupportive and downright sarcastic, and the Algebra/Geometry teacher wasn’t unlikeable but she didn’t go out of her way to be supportive.
It was sort of a domino effect from my experience with the Physics teacher.
It all turned out okay.
I didn’t have the right personality for math or science in university. The math aptitude comes in handy for so many things, whether one excelled in high school math classes or not.
I saw many of my teachers over the years, as they slowly died off. Now my classmates are following suit. Our “common core” classes at the university required me to take Biology with the biology majors, but they had to take foreign language classes with the Humanities majors, so … even Steven Regardless of personalities, I (as a professor for many years) regret that students these days have few if any required courses outside their majors. I flipped career expertise 4x while I worked, and it wasn’t a big deal for me to learn new stuff, because during my first 2 years of college, everybody had to take common classes. They’ve long since dropped that requirement. You learned how to learn. Novelty now.
2 Likes
