I'm so over my head

curmudgeon
Sun, 31 Oct 2004 00:51:42 +0000

I just have to laugh. So D and I were driving across town and as often happens when we are alone, we rolled through sports, and other high school issues relatively quickly so I decided to engage her in one of our (my?) recent queries on the board.

I mentioned the papers due all at once in the special program at Yale and her eyes bugged out. To further set up my point about fit and feel I brought up the Swat Calculus exam where a correct answer must be correct,show the work done,and you must be able to defend your result, and then I let the hammer down-and at these top schools they ask you why the answer to this calculus problem is correct. D said ,“so? What’s wrong with that?” I told her that she would have to be able to show why,trace why that answer was the correct answer,and no other answer was correct. She said ,"Dad.It would take me a long time on each problem but for example take $&%# and then ^&%%$ and $&%, well the answer is clearly ^%^%#^ because %%$$^& is always ^%^%^&%. It all goes back to *^%&% posit that &%&$64 proof that%$$%#^&## will always be $#^^$#$ …more gibberish^%%$%^%…even more gibberish(^&(%&%…and anyway we know that from the Pythagorean Theorem. I wanted to cry.