Monday, April 25, 2011

Unrest

Student: . . . the citizens' were then able to voice their unrest.
Me: Use discontent. You can't really voice unrest.
Student: Sure you can. I am unrested. I have not rested. I am voicing my unrest.
Me: That doesn't work.
Student: Ok.

Monday, April 18, 2011

He speaks with applebomb.

Me: Which two you were down to?
Student: Well, I didn't know what applebomb meant but I figured it was bad. You know an apple bomb. That would be bad.
Me: Apple bomb? Really? The word is aplomb.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Fake Functions*


x \oplus \!\, y = (x+y)², find 5 \oplus \!\, 3

Student: What is this thing?
Me: Don't freak out. The symbol just tells you there is a relationship between x and y and it tells you what it is. You just plug the numbers in.
Student: First there are letters, and then there are symbols? What's next? Sounds?
Me: Like ding dong equals 15?
Student: And dong equals 5
Me: What is ding?
Student: 3!
Me: Nice.







*Knowledge of made up math required to understand this post.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Mental.

Me: Ok. The problem is: Expand (2x +1)(x-1). What do you do?
Student: You have to FOIL, obviously.
Me: Yup.
Student: . . . It's 2x^2 -x -1. Did you just see that? I was mentally FOILing. I was moiling.