Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

Today in Sociology class we were asked to form groups of six so that we could work on a project together. Feeling like Grandpa Walton gathering the little rugrats around him, “Spin us another tale of the old days!”, the five closest classmates to me formed a group and we all exchanged introductions.

It was then that Drew said to me, “Didn’t you used to be on the radio?”

I blushed a bit and said that yes, I had been on the radio for about ten years. Darcy, sitting to my right, nodded in agreement and said she remembered me from the radio too. Shannon said that she listened to me when she was giving birth to her third child. I guess I had never thought back then that someone was listening to me while they were screaming out in pain and experiencing the miracle of birth. She said we were the only station that played Stevie B. and she remembered hearing “I Wanna Be The One”, the long version.

It was then that Drew said, “I remembered listening to you when I was little!”

Joy.

I have to wonder if I attended an elementary school where they considered students lab rats. Did the educational system say to themselves, “Let’s try something new with this class, and this class only, and see how they succeed in life!”. This statement would undoubtedly be accompanied by a sinister laugh. “Mwah ha ha ha ha ha ha”.

I’m talking about elementary math skills. Now I have a very accurate, vivid memory. It’s something that I pride myself on. And the New York State elementary educational system teaches students how to measure liquids, distances and densities in fifth and sixth grades, for the most part.

Here’s the kicker. I attended these grades from 1978-1980. And what was the United States going to do at that time? We were going to convert to the metric system. It was two kilometers to the next Service Area, we bought two liters of pop and our aspirin was being handed out in milligrams instead of tons. Therefore, my teachers apparently figured that they didn’t want to waste the time of teaching my classes the old system, since they were all about the future and the promise of flying cars and therefore, we’d all be taught the metric system.

I can convert from fahrenheit to celcius like it’s nobody’s business. I know what a decigram and a hectometer is. As a civil engineer with NYSDOT someday (cross your fingers everyone), I will be working on construction plans that are completely in metric. But, today I must take a test that proves my fluency in the English measurements. I must know how many hectares of milk are in a pound.

I’m seriously thinking of writing a temporary tattoo comprised of the conversion factors on my forearm, but I’d probably get in trouble for that. I don’t know how sexy that would be either.

I blame Miss O’Rourke and Mr. Krakowka (elementary school teachers). If they had the sense to tell us what a fluid ounce was in gallons, I’d feel more like a complete person and less like a lab rat.

In an effort to eat healthy, last Wednesday I skimped a little bit on my caloric intake for the day. Unfortunately, this caused me to what I call “bonk” in my math class: I became a little disoriented, disenchanted, disinterested and depressed. I’ve had the same thing happen to me while long-distance cycling. Back then, I approached a hill in the middle of nowhere and began to tear up at the prospect of having to climb another hill after having done the same for the past two hours. The surrounding cows were unsympathetic and continued to chew their cud.

I vowed I would not feel that way again.

Because I was bonking in class last week, I did poorly on one of my math tests. Luckily, I can retake the test. So this morning I have been running through exam simulations on the computer and studying like a madman.

After I finish up this blog entry, I’m going to go eat a protein bar so I don’t have another bonking incident.

Wikipedia’s explanation of bonk. The other type of bonking probably would have distracted me just as much, but would have made the math class much more interesting.