Questions and Answers

So, I’m taking calculus right now and I’m trying pretty hard to not let it kick my butt. I had a test on Wednesday and I was kinda stressing out about it (I know, stressing is definitely an excellent test taking strategy). So, of course, I was a little short tempered with the kids at school. I was fighting a headache and a stomach ache but I managed to make it through the day and make it to my test- although I was 10 minutes late. I’m not sure how the test went, but I wanted to say something that happened the following day as I was leaving work to go to an early class:

So, as I was leaving for class one of the kids stopped me. This kid is one of my favorites (I have a lot of faves) even though I don’t know why.
“Mrs. Sam! I hope you fail your math test!” he says.
What the frickin’ heck! Why would he say that? We usually joke around, but that was really low.
“I already took my test yesterday… Good thing.” I retorted.
The silly expression on his face changes. “What do you do on your math tests?” he asks.
“Ummm… math. What do you mean?” I say.
“Well, are there only math problems? Or are there words on there, too?”
“There’s both.”
“Well its math it shouldn’t have words.”
“Well, math does have words and all of the words correlate to ideas in math, right?”
He looks at me confused.
And then I have to ask, “Any more stupid questions?”

The only reason that I am saying that it was a stupid question is because what the heck else would a math test have on it than math stuff? Come on! But after I thought about it a little later, I realized- with the help of my husband- that the student probably knows nothing about college and didn’t even realize that he was asking a silly question. I have to learn to cut them a little bit of slack.