So Algebra II is the same all the way across the country? Weird, yet cool.

Cass!! Was that the first GA you saw?!

We have almost all of them still on the Tivo and, if only we could find a network connector, we would be able to burn them to DVD.

Stupid tivo network issues.

sarameg, sorry for the backage crashing.

if only we could find a network connector

Did you froogle? That's where I got mine--a refurb--for $19.

I should do that tonight because I'd like to transfer my Grey's Anatomy to somewhere else.

I got called out on wearing a red sweater to work. Someone said I was looking like a gangbanger. Right. In red chenille.

So Algebra II is the same all the way across the country?

Y'all had national exams. We have a very small number of textbook publishers trying to sell to Texas....

Edit: So, not national exams. But they have 'em somewhere, I swear!

Y'all had national exams.

Well, we had nationally available exams. One board was not like the others, and schools got to pick.

Huh. I was under the impression that they were more uniform than that. I shall edit.

I never took pre-calc either. Or observed it or anything. I have no idea what it's for.

When I was in 7th grade, my mat teacher marked me down for my homework being messy. A couple of weeks into the semester, we all took this test that somehow determined if we were ready for algebra class. Fortunately, I was. I bet if I hadn't changed classes at that point, I'd have ended up hating math instead of getting a BS in it, because that first class was clearly not going to be about learning anything.

I really enjoyed my high school mathematics classes and got straight As in Algebra 1, Geometry and Algebra 2. Alas, they didn't offer a senior calculus class, only one called Computer Math where you got to take turns programming Snoopy posters printed out on wide printer paper (programmed by very low baud modem over a telephone line). And the teacher was notoriously sexist, and this was in the 70s, so all the girls I know who'd taken it were very bitter about how they were treated.

I took an extra art class instead.

You would think, with that much enjoyment of math and also science, some high school counselor might have recommended I look into engineering or programming or any hard sciences. Instead I wifted off to take English literature, and it was only years later that I blundered into programming on my own....

Mind you, I don't actually remember algebra II and never took pre-calc -- what did you do in those classes?

I don't remember the methods we used, just that every single problem was accompanied by the teacher saying, "Now, next year, in calculus, you'll learn an easier way to do this..." Maybe if I hadn't been constantly told that, yes, we were deliberately doing things the long boring way, I wouldn't have noticed or minded so much.

Trig was its own half-term in 8th grade (the rest of the year was geometry). Like all the math I took, I don't remember any of it, but I think I liked it at the time.