An Encounter

Some kid comes into the barracks. Starts by asking after another teacher, but doesn't know the name... teaches in such & such room at so & so time... looks like blah-blah-blah. Sorry, buddy, probably your best bet is the schedule on the countertop up front. Well, it was about taking a class with this other guy; for that matter he'd like to have it with me on account of —he really said so—liking how I looked. And with Lena right there across the office marking papers. And of course the whole time I'm all "Well, jeez buddy I'm up on the internet gathering ranting fodder and so what's your actual question already?" but this last bit of straight-up appeal to my personal vanity was—I'm not made of stone—anyway, engaging.

So he's in 103 shopping for a 104 teacher. Well, have you got some exercise you're stuck on. And he comes up with something too, which is of course much to his credit and moreover when handwaving is clearly failing he falls right into place in the chair next to me and even (briefly) accepts the pencil to show me what he means. But all the time it's bigpicture stuff about how to be a better math student that he wants to hear about.

And I've got a few gems and particularly with Lena hearing everything we're doing—an audience predisposed to care about the Art—naturally I'm gonna dispense a few... the one where I say "Don't just show us calculations, show us presentations. Those bits where you scratch out certain parts of an expression—"cancelling" so-called—are for finding out the answer... but when you write out the answer the idea is to imagine that somebody doesn't already know how the calculation goes. You want to be as clear as possible."

And then there's "You know all those technical terms teachers keep using? Well, we want you to use them back to us. We make it look as if it's all about the calculations, but that's because there's always too much to do and we have to settle for getting the calculations right. To really see what's going on you have to be able to talk about what's going on... and you need the language that's designed for that purpose. To understand these words, you have to use them."

And all along we're looking at how to factor x^3 - 125... or rather "how am I gonna know 125 is a cube". Which, funny you should ask. But first, I ask you, what's factoring? And my student-of-the-moment actually stepped up at this point, proving again that he was worth talking to in the first place, and with a pretty good answer too for a 103 student, mentioning multiplication ("... and so the factors are multiplied to form the product" [just as terms are added to form sums ... I'm telling you, don't get me started with this stuff...]). So I pull out the old factor tree on 125 and learn that he avoided math in public school and had never seen the appeal then or seen 'em at all since then. "Well, this is what they were for."

And then there's the graph. And, in effect, the Factor Theorem... known to all students of Vlorbology as the subject of an epic rant... "they hint at this stuff in your book, but they only ever really tell you about it in courses like 148". Anyhow, having found the root at 5 (which, by the way, we didn't need the graph to have found... the factor tree would've done already: 5^3 = 125 tells us in so many words that 5 is a solution to x^3 - 125 = 0) one might long divide—and here I believe "I don't like that" were his very words—to get the factored form of our polynomial. And this without having had to appeal to the "difference of cubes" formula (which, between us, had already come up)—so this is where you get paid for the hard work of the long division.

Along with remarks about how to stay motivated and g-d knows what... but now for some remarks on the Art of Fiction.

In the first place, I have practically no knack for it. I've tried it a few times, so I know. It's the whole "show don't tell" thing (for one thing): readers have to be allowed to find meanings for themselves, but I just want to blurt out whatever I think I'm getting at in, you know, plain English. But then (for another), if I put myself to describing an incident from life in the form of fiction... and certainly I want everyone to see such a narrative, in this blog, as fiction... hell, the names are changed... Anyhow, the tendency here is to try to transcribe everything to the best of one's own recall, restoring lost dialogue to the best of one's ability.

Which is probably a really good exercise... whose real point might be finding the right pieces of dialogue, from the right parts of the encounter... But part of the achievement of real storytelling is to hide the artist... one has the feeling of "being there", seeing everything there is to see, hearing every word spoken, and so on. And pays no attention to the man behind the curtain.

But covering up the traces of my work has never been my style so (to say the least) it goes against the grain. And I expect there's a certain amount of golden-rule action here: like I reported just a few paragraphs ago, there's plenty of "okay, can we get to the point, please" in my life, and it takes, let's say, a certain amount of confidence to feel that, okay, this time, because it's this story, it'll be interesting.

All of which will serve by way of apology for not having re-created the scene even in my own mind's eye; it's about to fall apart altogether. Somewhere in all this, there was a bit where he wanted to favor me with his ideas about schooling, and despite my hints that such stuff just can't possibly be interesting because even if we figure out something true, there'll be nothing we can do about it, we got far enough to me to know he's against it and for me to say I think I probably agree with him (but all there is to do about it is write up opinions and shove 'em out into the internet).

Then finally, wrapping up, he's gonna get my e-dress and opens up his... hey, Macintosh. So that's kind of interesting. Not the exact same thing as mine but still the first one I'd seen in the wild since getting mine. So like a fool I indicate my interest and naturally now he's gotta show me something.

And I think at first maybe he'll be able. But find out pretty quick he's a naive user and takes me for a naiver. Wants to show me how to reset this mousepad... to his settings. And won't be convinced, without at least a little more "stop... please... I'm begging you..." than I like, that just because the factory settings drive me crazy, there's no reason to believe his settings will drive me less crazy... that "what he likes" isn't even data since if a lot of other people didn't like the way it comes out of the box better, it'd go his way to begin with.

And he thinks it's an old dog new tricks issue and I'm content to let it go at that if it'll get him to stop. But it's a pretty common misperception and I don't want you to think it, so let me just say that I'd love to be instructed in working with this fucking thing by somebody who knows much more than I do about, let's say, not only OS X, but operating systems in general. Or doing research on the web. Or publishing on the web. But listening respectfully while somebody explains stuff I already know, badly? I'm not so good at that and don't guess I ever was. And it's a problem sometimes.

Probably I'll reset the mouse settings myself when I have the peace of mind...