adventures in homework...

My daughter Angela is somewhat of a math genius. She's always been good at numbers and she's a hard worker too - getting good grades and pursuing higher education.

Over the years she has collected a high school diploma, a bachelor's degree in math, a masters degree and now a PhD! She has done her fair share of homework. She has also helped a variety of students with their homework.

She has also taught classes at the university as part of her career in math. Over the years she has been mistaken for an unaccompanied minor (while travelling home for Christmas with her HUSBAND), the new girl in class,  and the random girlfriend of one of the students. She has struggled to be taken seriously by her "adult learners". And in spite of her youthful appearance, she has soldiered on to teach her students all they need to know about MATH.

Surprisingly, the students who have given her the biggest challenge have been the "adult learners" who actually already have bachelors degrees and are training to be teachers. (Incidentally, the engineers were a very compliant group and generally did their homework.) 

From the future educators she has heard every excuse for homework not being turned in. ("my cat had a hairball and I spent the night in the pet ER", "I've got THREE kids, for crying out loud...and you assign homework?!" "my other grandmother died," and so on and so on.....) I've been thoroughly entertained by her rants regarding these self absorbed, incompetent, inattentive ("how was I supposed to know the exam schedule was on the syllabus?") students. ("I didn't feel like doing the assignment / I forgot to do the assignment.") The homework issue has been an ongoing battle that both Angela and I have found to be simply WEIRD. 

However, last week's assignment did provide Angela (and me) with a bit of levity.

I laughed out loud at the METH lesson plan and then I shed a couple of tears for public education. (or maybe those tears were just because I was laughing so hard...)