Do You Have Any Idea How This Makes Me Feel?

Physics, your name is cursed.

Oh what a wonderful week of Mondays! Finally, I found my "oh shit" place for the semester. I predicted that, for everyone in the program, it was Monday plus or minus 72 hours. Seems I was spot on with the estimate. Everyone has been walking around with that dazed look, wondering if we'll make it out of this thing alive.

Next week, I have two Biology tests, back-to-back. A few days later, I follow-up with Organic and Physics. How awesome is that? Pretty good, huh? Right now, I'm just fighting to keep my head above water with this crap. How am I supposed to walk on top of it?

On the plus side, no women have walked into the restroom while I was doing my business.

Colored Chalk Earns Favor, Doesn't It?
So, after two weeks of watching our physics prof scratch his head while drawing increasingly complex graphs and hearing him mutter how he's forgotten the colored chalk once again, I took the initiative to buy a bunch of it an just donate it to the cause. You know, it's only a ridiculously expensive private women's college; no hope for getting any chalk at that place. Hell, I've seen professors eating from dumpsters behind the building because of the lack of funding. Sad, really.

I bought a few boxes for $0.50 each and left them in my locker at school, relishing the idea of taking them to class and offering them at the opportune moment. Today, that moment happened. Instead of waiting for him to begin cross-hatching lines or drawing squiggly ones, I immediately offered up the goodies.

He was genuinely surprised and appreciative. I think the class was appreciative, too. When the prof asked me what it would cost him, the woman next to me piped up with "An 'A'." Not bad, I thought but I wasn't brown-nosing for a grade, I just can understand what the hell he's talking about when the board becomes a Jackson Pollock work in white chalk. Again, he asked me what he owed me.

"Fifty cents," I answered.

"C'mon, really, how much did it cost?," he persisted.

"Really, it was only fifty cents. Don't worry about it. It's my gift."

"Really? How much?"

"You owe me seventy dollars," I told him. "Really, don't worry about it. It's nothing." The class laughed and then enjoyed the wonderful multi-colored vector drawings.

... 5 Hours Later in Physics Lab ...
Later, we're in physics lab waiting. We're doing a lab that, under normal circumstances, would require us to conduct a free-fall experiment and then calculate the velocity, acceleration of the object. Well, the college doesn't have a "free-fall" machine, so he gave us the data to use. We performed the calculations and plotted our findings onto two graphs so that we could see the trends.

Today, no fooling, it took me ages to just get the scale of the axis drawn on the graph. Really, who uses graph paper any more? To make a long story shorter, we fight through all of the plotting, identify the slope of the line using an equation, and work through the given problem set. Before we left, we asked him to sign us out of the lab so we could split. He asks to see our work. Upon receiving it, he immediately commences the ass-whipping. Today, it was my turn to be the recipient. It went something like this:

"Who drew this graph? Why isn't your line smooth?," he asked incredulously.

"I did, sir. I just connected everything out of habit. I added a trend line it's just really faint," I respond.

"Why did you draw it like this? This isn't a straight line; you can't use this graph. How can you get a slope if you don't have a straight line on this?," he continued, throwing his hands up and shaking his head.

"Well, professor, I did add the trend line; I'm used to graphing with Excel. It's been about 15 years since I've done anything like this by hand."

"This is unusable. This is... Do you have any idea how this makes me feel?"

"I think I'm starting to get a very clear picture, sir," I jab.

"This is bad," he added, gesturing and shaking and pointing. He was wild-eyed and furious, a perfect caricature of an old man getting really bent out of shape over something trivial. "What do you mean dinner is served at 4:45pm? It's 4:30! It's always been 4:30!"

At that point, I sort of tuned out to what he was saying. Took a deep breath and watched him conduct his symphony of my deficiencies as a physics student. My proudest moment.

When he walked away, I whisper "But I brought you colored chalk!" and pack my bag, mutter a fantastic string of obscenities, and stagger toward the door.

The offending graph.

Consequently, I showed it to my dog and he thought it was great.