Today was a good day. (I should grade every day. Good or bad. Today good, yesterday bad. Me Tarzan, you Jane.) Work was meh, but I came home early today to be here for our spring A/C maintenance, and I really liked the HVAC guy. Chatting turned what probably would have been a 30-minute visit into an hour and a half, but who cares? He’ll get overtime. On top of that, I’m two-thirds of the way through my third quiz. Unfortunately, I still have another quiz to complete before I can take the midterm, which has to be taken no later than June 19th, which happens to be a Sunday, which really means I have to take it by Friday, June 17th, so I’m aiming for Thursday, June 16th. (And I’m a little nervous about it, which may explain the previous sentence.) Let’s ignore that I used to be good at calculus. My problem is that I don’t remember basic theorems and trig identities and tricks I used to have memorized. Twelve years ago. When I last took a calculus class. Not remembering isn’t a problem when I’m doing homework and quizzes – I have the internet. They’re open book. My midterm? Not so much. No calculator, no computer, no help. Just my memory. My faulty, holey, Swiss cheese memory that’s full of gaps.
I just came off an online Q&A with the professor. He’s not long-winded, really, but he spends so much time messing with the technology he’s using (some of which is very cool) that these things take forEVER. But I feel a little better about the class. For now. Until panic sets in again. Probably early to mid next week.
IBCRandy
I was working on writing a game recently and was very pleased with myself. I came across an issue that needed some trig, and while I didn’t remember the law of sines or law of cosines, I at least remembered enough about them to look them up on wikipedia and managed to get the issue solved. And then I felt the need to call Mrs. Higdon and apologize for saying I would never use that stuff in the real world. Not that I did.
Zannah
Wikipedia to the rescue! I have to memorize the unit circle (all the values as you rotate around), and I’m going to wikipedia for the image.
IBCRandy
I memorized the unit circle and then promptly forgot it after the test. It bit me in the ass all through college.
Melvin?
I was gonna say something about not being in school, but then you both confused me with that unit circle nonsense.
Hm.
Zannah
You took trig, didn’t you?
Melvin?
Who, me? You’re joking, right? I never took anything more advanced than algebra 2. Then I took a college algebra class as an undergrad and that statistics class a couple years ago for biomedical research. I wouldn’t even know how to define trigonometry.
Zannah
Thought you did in high school. What do I know?