Monday, July 09, 2007

what exactly are we talking about?

My first day of calculus went by surprisingly well considering I haven't touched anything calculus related in 9 years. Deriva-what? That stuff got replaced with phrases from Harry Potter and song lyrics ages ago. In one of my wiser moments (they don't happen very often...) I remembered to snitch one of the new high school calculus texts from the school before I left and spent some time reading it during the drive. Certainly doesn't rank anywhere near recommended reading of any kind, but it was a good warm up stretch before my first class. It kept me from wigging out when my prof started talking about limits anyway. Ya, that's right, my level of confusion is rating somewhere around the wigging out level.

My prof seems alright. His English is passable (thank a random deity!) and his accent rarely throws me off. It took me a few times to realise he pronounces the letter a e (ee). Which is really weird to me. How do you speak really well, yet not know how to say the first letter of the alphabet? Not to mention the letter a comes up a lot, so I am always having to double check what letter he actually means.

There is one little speech issue that I'm having massive difficulties with. We were discussing some kind of function - surprise! - and he kept referring to the nominator. Which, ok, you can't say numerator. It's only a couple vowel sounds. When he started talking about the dominator however, I lost it. Dominator is quite a ways away from denominator. And it's hilarious. Just try and discuss a dominator of x squared without laughing. This might be my pick me up all summer - just thinking about dominators makes me laugh, no matter where I am. Which of course makes me very cool, ie crazy. Thanks professor Laayoumi, I am now crazy laughing metro/walking/random girl because of you.

1 comment:

bag marla said...

and now I'm going to be too, thanks a lot!!