Adventures of a snarky nerdy feminist geek bookworm 20-something. Yeah, it's a niche. Deal with it.

The procrastinators leading the procrastinators

February 16th, 2011

On Monday I learned that Future Particle Physicist has been lying to my face for weeks about his homework. He often tells me that he "doesn't have" homework in a particular subject, or that his teacher gave the students time to work on it during class and already he handed it in. Now that I have access to his gradebook (the wonders of the internet, none of this stuff even remotely existed 6 years ago when I was in school) I can see that this is a bunch of crap Read More...

Learning the learning curve

February 2nd, 2011

One of the 6th graders that I tutor has quite the inquisitive mind. A few weeks ago I was explaining elements and compounds to him out of his science text. He quickly got me off on a tangent explaining about the Bohr model of the atom. I was trying to explain what makes an element an element, namely that if you have an atom of helium it's the smallest possible bit of helium that's still helium Read More...

Why People Hate Math

October 21st, 2010

As I might have mentioned here in passing before, I've been supporting myself through tutoring lately. I figure, I can't get a job as an engineer, I might as well put all that overpriced math and science education to use. Luckily for me, there are lots of people in this area who are more than willing to drop $30 an hour for me to help their kids with math Read More...