Challenges.

This is the last week of the summer semester at school. By this time Thursday night I will have completed my Intermediate Algebra final and bagged a pretty good buzz from a couple of brewskis in celebration, because I am naturally a two beer queer.

This class has been an interesting one. Populated with mostly older folks taking their time at the finishing their degree, there has been one woman near my age who has consistently barked out the wrong answer to every question posed while the professor has been squeaking the chalk on the board the entire semester. He could ask “what’s 2 plus 2?” and she’d yap out “5”. I’d then say “4” in a slightly irritated voice, resisting the urge to throw on a Thurston Howell III accent while correcting her. I don’t think of her as Lovey.

The professor likes to give us extra credit tasks with what I call “speed trials”. For example, he’ll write an endless sea of variables, lines, operators and operands and tell us that the first five people to answer the given problem will get three extra points on the next exam. While I can normally answer the question, I must say that I’m not good in the role of Speedy Gonzales. I’ve purposely slowed myself down for this round of college so that I’m sure of what I’m doing and making sure I do it correctly. Give me time, I’ll figure it out. Last Thursday he wrote an equation with several real and imaginary numbers involved and announced, “The first person to answer this question will 5 points added to their semester grade.”

Holy crap.

Of course I froze. I don’t care, I’m already hovering near the top of the “A”‘s so I figured “let them eat cake” and slammed my pencil down, not in the mood to get all imaginary with numbers. Naturally, Ms. Yap was the only one to answer the question correctly. She sure picked a doozy for her grand debut.

So the challenge this week is to enjoy Independence Day AND study for the final the following day.