When math class is actually tolerable

You can probably tell from the title of this post that math is not my favorite subject. Spending 90 minutes every other day in a math class isn't my idea of pleasure. However, I knew that this year wouldn't be so torturous because I have Mr. Wiechmann (pronounced "Wickman," hence his teacher website "Wiechipedia": he says Wikipedia will sue him sooner or later) as a teacher.
He was my geometry teacher in freshman year, and I am delighted to have him again in intro calculus!

I have his class right after lunch. I assume he eats lunch in his classroom because sometimes, he leaves his lunchbox on my desk...

Yeah. That's Badtz-Maru. 

But just because I have a great teacher doesn't mean I love math now. That'd be too cliche. Today, I paid special attention to what he was saying not because the lesson interested me or I wanted to put more effort into math (hah, that'll only happen in your dreams), I wanted to keep track of the funny things he said.

First thing we did today was a warm-up. The assignment was projected onto the Smart board screen, and the background was a Netherlands dwarf rabbit since it involved Netherlands dwarf rabbits and building a fence for them.

Not the exact picture, but this is what these rabbits look like.

I made a remark on how adorable it was. My teacher overheard and he replied, "It's there to lull you into a false sense of happiness."

If only all math problems came with such distractions!

Going along the problem, he came up of different fence lengths and widths. One ended up being two widths directly overlapping each other with no length at all, and he commented, "And the poor bunnies are all squished between them... oh that happened once! I had a kitten a while ago. I was wondering where it was, and then I found it caught between the glass door and the screen door." I don't think the cat was dead, just trapped. Not that I'd really care, I hate cats. I might bring that up again in this blog, who knows.

At one point, he was doing a demonstration on the huge on-screen calculator. It gave a result of x=29.999999. Another student asked why his calculator gave him x=29.97. He supposed that it was because it was a Texas Instruments calculator, and if it was designed in Texas and made in China, it was a lethal combination. Luckily my calculator (ADVERTISING: GO BUY THE CASIO COLOR SCREEN GRAPHING CALCULATOR. YOU WON'T REGRET IT) gave me an x=30 and I just laughed in my head at the misfortune of others stuck with inferior calculators.

As a final anecdote, he was explaining the algebra included in a problem. A student noticed a minor error he made, and Mr. Wiechmann said, "This is why I don't like teaching algebra while doing it at the same time. It's like texting and driving. Every now and then I go off and people get hurt. 'I'm sorry I hurt you with this misplaced negative!'" Seriously though, they can hurt. Once spotted they need to immediately be reported to authorities.

DISCLAIMER

Before you go off thinking that I'm a lazy student who spends time analyzing people instead of focusing on her studies, know that that is entirely not true. I'm a lazy straight-A student who just knows how to find the most efficient way to learn material and retain it. Sometimes, that just involves analyzing the people around me. I recommend it. You should try it sometime.