September 8, 2009 | "Whoa whoa I gotta go...back to schoooool...again",1st Semester,Life in General,Math Explorations,Prescott College,School Daze,The 4-1-1 on Me
I had my first weekly phone call with my math teacher. We talked about some of the math exercises, and my decisions regarding my experiential project (floor plans for building) and the required reading (I’ve narrowed it down to two, but still need clarification).
The thing is…I was looking forward to this class after reading the syllabus.
And then I got the Math Exercises and now I’m having second, third, fourth and fifth thoughts. I’m still looking forward to doing the experiential portion, but even though he said these were “brain teasers”, not math problems, it reeks of math problems.
For example:
If a cat can eat a rat, how long will it take 50 cats to eat 50 rats? (Yes, you have to do this one. And no, the rats are not in the sewer.)
I don’t know about you, but that definitely resembles a math problem. We’re supposed to get the answers around week 9 or 12, and just work on these at our leisure. I found myself gravitating towards the questions that involved more “thinking” than “figuring”.
For example:
Why does time seem to pass more quickly as we get older?
The questions that I did answer, we talked about. I got them wrong, of course. And the hints he gave me were of no help, either.
Working on these math exercises, and I’m talking about the math exercises here, is the only part I hate. Every time I pull out those stapled pages and read over the math exercises, I start to feel frustrated. I wish the questions had been more brain teaser than math. Then again, it wouldn’t be called math, would it?
