I had a teacher for algebra 2 who basically thought we were all stupid. It was only due to my parents intervention and a wonderful student teacher that I and others got back into the advanced track. Most of us later did really well on the AP Calculus exam, 3 of us on theBC.

For algebra 1, we had a teacher who admittedly barely could do algebra. No idea why she had the position. Anyway, we got lucky because her student teacher had a Masters in Engineering. So she taught the first semester. Second semester, I spent one hour every night, working through the math book with dad (and anything else that popped into his head.) And then I'd spend an hour on the phone, or over at Nicole's, teaching that to her and Val. That was middle school. Principal got an earful that spring.

Next year, in high school, the fuss about it had made it to the administration's ears. But instead of putting all of us from O'Hara's in the hands of an experienced teacher, they dump us all on a new guy who'd never taught algebra 2 before. He knew it, just hadn't taught it, and clearly resented us.

There was more fuss, which just made him pretend harder, but not teach any better. So the sessions at home continued. I started to test terribly at this point (probably due to all the bullshit.) There were lots of tears, because I knew I could do it and I was tanking exams and I was a kid who would get upset by a B!

At the start of the next year, none of us were in the calculus track, and my parents were pissed. Luckily, my student teacher had just joined the staff (taking the place of the A2 teacher, go figure.) When my parents found out, they contacted her and she went to the department head and basically, they ended up meeting with all the students and assessing our level at the start of the year. About half the class were put back into the calc track. And the former student teacher got the rest. Most of them were up to speed by the end of the fall.

I majored in physics, Val's a surgeon and Nicole, a CPA. Clearly stupid at math. @@

So keep supporting her and make sure she knows you have her back.

I decided the genealogy program was too complicated for me to do right now, so I made a program where you can enter a bunch of people's birthdays, and it'll check them against today's date and tell you if anyone's birthday is today. It's a fairly useless program in the real world, since it doesn't save the birthdays -- you just enter a bunch of them, and then it checks to see if any of them are today, and then the program quits and it forgets everything -- but there were a few things that I needed to do for it that I didn't know how to do, and I figured them out, so I'm kinda proud of that.

I ran across the Elisa Tam case during the Halloween weekend's search for creepy reading material. Sleep tite: [link]

Good for you, Hil!

Broke out the ugly,shiny purple fleece lined pants. Still not turning on the heat...yet. 64 inside. Loki keeps trying to sleep on the open laptop. But they have fur coats!

...Gah. Just finished watching through the eighth episode of Transparent, and kind of haunted and wrecked by it. Is it being discussed anywhere?

So keep supporting her and make sure she knows you have her back.

Thanks sarameg, that is inspiring

Don't like these winds.

Don't forget to:

1) Set your clocks ahead one hour tonight.

2) Arrive at at church two hours early tomorrow.

3) Set your clocks back two hours.

Whoa, Scandal takes place in a world without Reagan. Weird.

There's a world without Reagan? ...I'm allergic.