Why Didn't I Know That?

Even if you don't consider yourself a 'math person', it's possible and even likely that you're heard of the Fibonacci sequence. It's one of those things math teachers talk about to try to get kids interested in math, something that crosses the border from mathematics to pop culture on occasion.

For the unfamiliar, the Fibonacci sequence begins with the numbers 0 and 1 (or in some versions, 1 and 1—which ends up, for all practical purposes, making no difference whatsoever). From there, you get the next number in the sequence by adding the previous two numbers together. So the first few terms in the sequence are:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597....

The Fibonacci sequence has been linked to things as varied as pine cones, bees, Debussey, "The DaVinci Code", the orbits of the planets, and the Golden Mean. Anciently, some people thought the Fibonacci numbers had mystical properties. I've even used the sequence as the basis of a plot point in a Champions campaign.

I learned something new about the sequence the other day, though. As I was sitting with a junior high school math class in a library presentation, the librarian pointed out that any three consecutive numbers in the sequence share an interesting relationship. Take any number in the sequence and square it. Then take the numbers immediately before and after your chosen number and multiply them together. Then subtract the smaller result from the larger. For example:

55 ² = 3025
34 x 89 = 3026
3026 - 3025 = 1

The difference will always be 1. I never knew that.

It's amazing what you can learn just by being someplace that you normally wouldn't be.

Feast

Friday's Feast, 29 September 2006.

Appetizer What is your favorite herb or spice?
Probably cinnamon, with lemon pepper and seasoned salt also getting consideration.

Soup Name a song you like but haven't heard in a long time.
"Fantasy" by Aldo Nova

Salad If you were to take just one minute to write down as many things as you can think of that you need (not want) to do, approximately how many things would there be?
Right now I can think of at least half a dozen things I have to do, all of them annoying. (With a nod to Commander Ivanova.)

Main Course Tell something interesting about one of your family members (nothing scandalous, please, just something unique).
My youngest brother was born two months premature. Naturally they took him out via C-section, but the doctor cut a little too deep when making the key incision. As a result, he has a permanent reminder of how he came into this world: a scar across his backside.

Dessert What's the latest you've ever stayed awake?
I can remember at least three occasions where I stayed up for well over 30 consecutive hours: twice for New Year's Eve and once to finish a several lab reports for Quantitative Analysis.

The Proverbial One-Legged Man (Part 1)

The last couple of weeks have been insanely busy. I'm coming to realize that if I don't start telling this story now, in parts, that I'm never going to get it told. And this series of events is remarkable enough that I want some kind of permanent record. So here's the first installment, with future episodes as time and opportunity permit. -M

Tuesday, September 12th
I did my first bit of substitute teaching on the 7th and 8th of this month. It was a good experience, and I looked forward to doing more. In fact, I'd already been approached by a middle school teacher about covering her math classes while she had surgery. Good job experience, I thought, so I took her up on it. That assignment was supposed to start on September 28th and run until about the end of October. And I got a call from one of the teachers about substituting at the technical institute for a couple of days. I was set.

On the 12th, I got an interesting call from the Granite district Guest Teacher office. It was Pam, the same lady who'd conducted the training I attended last month. She said she needed a long-term substitute for a math teacher at one of the west side high schools. He'd been recalled by the military and would be out, in all likelihood, until the end of the school year in June. Because of the long-term nature of the assignment, they were going to give me the highest pay rate the district offers for doing it, which is about half again as much as my 'real' job pays me. The biggest challenge, she said, was that I'd have to come up with lesson plans and tests and so forth. It would be, for all practical purposes, my own class.

I was overwhelmed. After the disappointments of trying to find a teaching job this spring and summer, the possibility of having a class of my own was at hand. True, it was for math and not science, and true, it wasn't a guaranteed thing, but still, it was a classroom of my own. All kinds of thoughts about what I might do with it and how I would handle things came to mind. Pam was still explaining details through all of this, so I reined my thoughts back in and took a few notes. She said I could think about it for a day or two and call her back when I'd made my decision.

I called Nancy first. We talked about the possibilities, the challenges, and the potential. She was so happy and so proud of me. She told me she had faith in me. She's always been so supportive, and this occasion was no different. Then I called my mother, or tried to. I got Dad instead, so I told him the news and asked him to have Mom call me. Then I called Pam back and told her I'd take the position. She was thrilled—a little too thrilled, in retrospect.

At work that night, I talked to Jason, my boss, about this development. I told him that if this thing worked out, I'd probably go on indefinite leave of absence at the end of the month. So we made plans to spend the rest of September essentially training my replacements. It started that night, when I told Allen and Jeff that for all practical purposes they'd be running the shift, and I'd be observing and offering occasional helpful suggestions. They did okay, only a couple of small issues arose, and they were easily fixed. They'll be okay without me, I thought.

Wednesday, September 13th
Given that I'd never been to this particular high school before, and in fact didn't even know where it was, I decided to run over to the school before work on Wednesday and take a look around. I got there and introduced myself to the secretary. She told me a little about the teacher and the classes I'd be covering for. She told me where to find the classroom and gave me a key. So I made my way out there.

My classroom is a relocatable modular unit, or 'relo' for short—a large, glorified Tuff-Shed, for all practical purposes. And it's a little isolated. The offices are located in the southeast corner of the school. The long axis of the school is north-south. At the north end of the school is the cafeteria, beyond which is the student parking area. In the middle of that parking lot is a community swimming pool. My relo is on the north (far) side of the pool. There are four of these units clumped together there, and two of them are technically a few feet farther away from the rest of the school than mine is. But yeah, my class is in the middle of nowhere. Still, I had classes in rooms like this in high school (Spanish class and Mr. Altergott's useless senior history class come to mind). No big deal.

I was also directed to meet two of the teachers. One was the woman who teaches Algebra I and Geometry classes in the relo next to mine. I met her and we chatted for a few moments. She's Russian, but her English is superb, and she knows her stuff where teaching math is concerned. I also got to meet the head of the math department. We talked for a while, and he showed me around the math office, which is located in yet another building away from the main building. He gave me the grand tour and talked to me about all kinds of things involving the school, the department, and the classes I'd be taking over. He went on at some length, and before I knew it, I needed to leave for my other job. So I excused myself and made my way over to work, just in time to begin my penultimate training class.

Thursday, September 14th
They say that experience is the best teacher, but also the most difficult because it teaches the lessons only after you've taken the tests. This was a pretty good summary of what happened on Thursday.

I arrived feeling pretty confident about the day. I had three 90-minute Algebra I classes, all of which were scheduled to take a test that day. So my plan, as suggested by the teacher's notes, was to take half an hour to review the material and then give them an hour to take the test. Pretty simple for the first day.

The first class went pretty much according to plan. The only thing I found unusual was the fact that only about half the class was actually there when I finished taking roll. (I would come to find, over the next week or so, that this was pretty much the norm for this particular class.) We reviewed, and I gave them the test. A few of them finished early, but most took the whole time. In general, it went okay.

Second period was where the difficulties began. This class was a lot bigger, with about 30 students. Getting their attention was a struggle from the start. One girl on the front row—let's call her 'K'—started complaining almost immediately about the noise level. I tried several times to get the class' attention, but I was fighting a losing battle. I tried some of those techniques I'd learned in that training class, but to little avail. And then K just walked out, not to return that day.

So the time came to pass out the test, and my astonishment continued. While many of the students started in on their tests, a large number of them kept on talking, messing around, and generally acting like nothing unusual was happening. So I began to encourage them individually and in small groups to get to work on their tests. That helped a little, but I still had a group of malcontents in the front corner of the room who couldn't seem to keep quiet. So I went and sat with them. Every time I left the table to check on something else, one of them shoved my rolling office chair away from the table. Cute. So each time, I rolled the chair back and took up my position. This took place three or four times before I got sick of it. So the next time I rolled my chair right up beside the ringleader of this little band of hooligans and put my feet up for emphasis. He took offense, got up and flung his chair away, and stomped over to the far corner of the room. He sat there for the rest of the period, refusing to do anything else on his test. At least he was quiet after that.

I had lunch after that, and I made my way down to the office. As I was talking to the secretary one of the vice principals came over and introduced himself. He asked if he could speak with me for a few moments. So we went into his office, and the disappearance of K was explained—she'd gone straight to him to complain. So I spent my lunch hour being lectured on the subject of classroom control. At one point, I thought about interrupting and saying, "Yes, I understand what the problem is. As you might have deduced, I was there. Have you got any solutions you can offer me?" Condescending and unhelpful, all rolled into one package. How efficient. My mother told me there'd be administrators like this.

I made my way back to the relo for my third class. This class started off looking a little better, with a couple of the students being very friendly and welcoming me to class. So we did the review and started the test, and the results weren't much better than in second period. Several of the students, including the friendly ones, put their names on their tests, then went back to what they'd been doing. Again I encouraged them to focus on their tests, but as with the second period class, many of the students either didn't know anything, or didn't care about failing the test, or both. And one group, sitting at the same table at the hooligans previously mentioned in period two, couldn't seem to grasp the idea that they weren't supposed to be helping each other on the test. Are you serious?! I told them two or three different times to do their own work. I swear, the next time I administer a test I'm going to carry around a yellow highligher and mark anyone's test who's doing their own work.

Class ended, and I was left with a planning period for the last 90 minutes of the day. I reflected on what I'd experienced that day, and I felt extremely discouraged. I knew that the students hadn't had a lot of stability in their classes, that they'd had a series of substitute teachers for the previous couple of weeks, none of whom really knew anything about the subject. Still, I felt like the whole day had been a waste of time, for me and for them. Sure, there were a few students who seemed interested in learning, but for the most part, they didn't want to be there. Not surprising, I suppose; they start teaching Algebra I in 7th grade these days, from what I understand. The fact that these high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors are still trying to pass it indicates something about either their math skills or their effort level—or probably both.

The devil of it all is that I can help them. I know about math. Heaven knows I've taken enough of it. I know that I could show them how to be successful—if they wanted to be. But for the most part, they don't. And I can't seem to figure out how to approach that part of it. How do you help someone who doesn't want to be helped, who doesn't even care whether they pass the class or not?

That's all I have written at the moment. More later.

I Don't Get It

Okay, so I go to bed last night knowing I have to be up at 6:00 in order to get to school on time. I get to bed at a decent hour, around 10:30 or 10:45.

I wake up at 4:15 needing to go to the bathroom. It takes about two minutes.

So why should it take me almost 45 minutes to get back to sleep?

And what's with all the music going through my head as I try to think about nothing and return to blissful slumber? "After All" by Peter Cetera and Cher, fifteen seconds of which I heard three days ago? "Back In the USSR", which I can't recall having heard at all in the last few months? What's with the unsolicited mental soundtrack?

I don't get it.

Another Week, Another Meme (or two)

Part I: Friday's Feast
Friday's Feast, 22 September 2006.

Appetizer Measured in minutes or hours, how much exercise have you had in the last week?
Probably about three hours of walking and an hour of stretching. I could use more of both.

Soup If you had to change your blog title to something else, what would it be?
"All Now Mysterious..."

Salad Name one television show you watched when you were 9-12 years old.
WKRP in Cincinnati. I can still remember Venus Flytrap's explanation of the atom.

Main Course If someone gave you $50 to spend with the one condition that it had to be educational, what would you purchase?
Cosmos by Carl Sagan. Simply the best mass-media science production ever made.

Dessert Do you tend to prefer dark colors, neutral shades, or lighter/pastel hues?
While my wife says she's never seen a color that doesn't look good on me, I tend to favor dark colors.
(Though not as much as my friend Jon, who owns a shirt that reads "I'm only wearing black until they invent something darker.")

--

Part II: Top 5 On Friday
Top Five on Friday from The Music Memoirs:

Top 5 albums you're glad that you bought this year (not necessarily new releases).


» Careless by Micky and the Motorcars


» Age of Impact by Explorers Club


» Chill Classics by Mozart, Sibelius, Beethoven, et. al.


» Under the Table and Above the Sun by Reckless Kelly


» Revolution Road by Rocket Scientists
(I haven't actually bough this one yet—it's not even being officially released until tomorrow, and then only in Japan—but I know I'm going to love it.)

Double Meme

Part I: Friday's Feast
Friday's Feast, 15 September 2006.

Appetizer What was the very last song you listened to?
"I Don't Want It All" by Mike + the Mechanics.

Soup What is one company/store/corporation you would recommend that people stay away from?
ANY quick loan/check cashing/payday advance store. They're loan sharks. They're predators who feed on the foolish, the fiscally ignorant, and those who lack self-control. If your credit sucks so bad that you can't get a loan from a bank and you're that desperate to borrow money, borrow it from the Mafia instead. Their repayment terms are much more reasonable.

Salad On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how much do you enjoy having your picture made?
Five, maybe. I don't seek out photo ops, but I also don't hide from cameras.

Main Course Besides a bookmark, what is something you've used to keep your place in a book?
A $1 bill signed by Ted Nugent.

Dessert Name a food that you like that most people don't.
Beets. I think pickled red beets are quite tasty. I don't know why a lot of people (including my wife) don't like them.

--

Part II: Top 5 On Friday
Top Five on Friday from The Music Memoirs:

Top five songs and/or albums that should have been "hits":

» Isolation by Toto
Toto IV sold millions of copies and won the group a couple of Grammys. Isolation was probably a better album, though it lacked a runaway hit single like "Rosanna" or "Africa". "Stranger In Town" is still one of the group's best songs.

» Between Sunlight and Shadow by Singularity
This 15-part suite is one of the better progressive rock offerings of the past five years. It's not for the masses, but every prog fan should own this CD.

» Wicked Twisted Road by Reckless Kelly
I don't listen to country on the radio because it pretty much all sounds the same: shallow, overproduced, and derivative. Fans of serious country music ought to buy two copies of this CD - one for themselves and one for their local DJ.

» The Catch Me If You Can soundtrack
The unexpectedly hip jazz score from John Williams is worth the cost of admission on its own. The additional pieces by Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, and Frank Sinatra should have sent this disk over the top.

» On Every Street by Dire Straits
Okay, so it would have been almost impossible to match the performance of Brothers in Arms. But this disk should have done better commercially. It's a testament to Mark Knopfler's songwriting that two of the songs on the album ("When It Comes To You" and "The Bug") were Top 40 country hits for other artists.

Too Much Civilization?

Yesterday was my youngest brother's birthday. As we were chatting, the Randy Rogers Band song "They Call It the Hill Country" came up. We talked about how much the same thing described in the song is happening in our hometown, and across the West.

They Call It the Hill Country
The hills of cow gap stood rugged and awesome
But you have to have fill dirt when you're building a road
And the hills of cow gap, they weathered the ages
Got wiped off the map for 12 dollars a load

Chorus: They call it the hill country, I call it beautiful
I'd call it progress if it could be saved
They call it the hill country, I call it home
But what will they call it
When it's leveled and paved?

Uncivilized pagans drank untreated water
Right out of our rivers back in their day
Now those streams bubble with clean treated sewage
While they sit in their hot tubs and they sip Perrier.

Chorus

Scrape off the hilltops, build look-alike houses
Move in some people and turn on the TV
After the ball game, turn on some old movies
They'll smile when they see how things used to be.

Chorus
Repeat Chorus

While I don't know that anyone would call me an 'environmentalist whacko', I do believe in the value of conservation. I'm a little disturbed at the idea we now seem to have that we have to use every available square yard of space for housing complexes. I'm amazed when I return to the old home town to see acres of cornfields now filled with look-alike houses. If all the cornfields are full of houses, where are people going to grow corn?

The old home town is a lot bigger now than when I lived there. But is it any better?

Send In the Sub!

I had my first Guest Teaching experience last Thursday and Friday. I filled in for a teacher at the district’s technical institute, an advanced vocational high school offering training in health sciences, dental assisting, computer science, engineering, and a few other disciplines. It’s a neat idea. The students are bused in from all the other high schools in the district for these advanced classes, and almost every class offered at the school includes concurrent enrolment at the local community college. It was a great experience for a first substitute job—all the students were there because they chose to be there.

I had two two-an-a-half hour classes each of the two days. However, the school was having its orientation those two days, so I really only had to cover about 90 minutes for each class. On Thursday, my first class was a CNA training class. There was a vocabulary-building activity and a video on checking for vital signs: temperature, pulse, respiration, and blood pressure. The video showed proper technique for checking the pulse and observing respiration without letting the patient know you’re watching them breathe. It also showed the proper use of a sphygmomanometer, which is the technical name for the blood pressure cuff (or the pressure gauge that makes it work, to be more specific). Finally, it showed the three different ways to take a patient’s temperature: orally, axillarily (in the armpit), and rectally. In detail. With live examples. Yep, they spun some poor old guy over on his side, pulled up his gown, and took his temperature. One piece of advice they gave with this section: you need to hold on to the thermometer the entire eight to ten minutes necessary to get an accurate rectal temperature. You never want to leave a thermometer, especially a mercury thermometer, just sticking out there. Ick. Makes sense, but ick.

The afternoon class, as well as both classes on Friday, was for a Medical Anatomy and Physiology class. The students had to assemble an information packet to take home for their parent(s) to sign. Then they did an activity to learn about the sagittal, coronal (or frontal), and transverse planes of the body. They made a little person out of Play-Doh, then cut it into the appropriate sections. Some of what I saw in this exercise made me think that some of my students were a little disturbed, but they’re high schoolers, so that’s not entirely unexpected.

The other activity for that class was also vocabulary-related. They had a handout, about six pages long, of medical abbreviations they need to memorize over the course of the semester. The day’s activity was to cover the first twenty terms. They made flash cards for those terms, then quizzed each other. This, the regular teacher thought, should keep them busy for the remainder of the period. Not so, as it turned out. They were finishing up and starting to act restless with about half an hour of class time left. So I improvised, split up the class into three teams, and we played Medical Terminology Jeopardy. Some of the students found out they didn’t know quite as much as they thought they knew, so I think it was a good thing.

One funny part of that Thursday afternoon class came when one of the students, a young blonde girl, asked about one of the abbreviations, AX:

YBG: What does 'axillary' mean?
Me: It has to do with the axilla, or armpit.
YBG: Why do we have to know that?
Me: It’s one of the three ways you can take someone’s temperature.
YBG: Ooh, that’s disgusting.
Me: Well, then you’re really not going to like the other one.

Fun and good times.

By Friday afternoon, I felt pretty good about things. I’d made it through my first substitute teaching experience without any major problems. I’d shown that I could manage a classroom and think on my feet. The other teachers and administrators seemed impressed with my professionalism and my knowledge. I even got an invitation to come back next week and sub for one of the other teachers there. All signs are good. It should make for an interesting second part-time job.

Or so I thought. More on that later.

Friday Meme Fix

Part I: Friday's Feast
Friday's Feast, 8 September 2006.

Appetizer Name 3 things that you are wearing today.
1. Dress shoes in desperate need of a shine
2. Ankle brace
3. Granite School District ID badge

Soup Who was the last person you hugged?
Nancy, when I dropped her off at the airport on Wednesday. Can't wait for her to get back!

Salad What do you like to order from your favorite fast food place?
I'm not even sure what my favorite fast food place is at the moment. Costa Vida is pretty good, and I usually get the sweet pork or fajita grilled steak burrito with black beans and medium sauce.

Main Course What time of day do you usually feel most energized?
Mid- to late morning. I actually feel more energized if I get up early than if I sleep in, although 'early' isn't as early as it was six months or a year ago.

Dessert Using the letters in your first name, write a sentence.
My incredibly corny humor always elicits laughter.

--

Part II: Top 5 On Friday
Top Five on Friday from The Music Memoirs:

Top 5 Forgotten Songs
(e.g., songs with forgetting in the title or songs that seemed to have been lost over the years...or however you want to interpret it)

I'm sure I used to know some songs about forgetting...but I can't remember any of them. Strange how that works. So I'll do songs that I remember...about remembering.

» "I Will Remember You" by Amy Grant
(from Heart In Motion)

» "Remember the Feeling" by Chicago
(from Chicago 17)

» "Remembrance Day" by Asia
(from Aria)

» "I Will Remember" by Toto
(from Tambu)

And here's one that remains true to the original theme:

» "Unforgettable" by Natalie and Nat King Cole
(from Unforgettable: With Love)

Quote of the Day

Finding truth at a rally or a press conference is no more likely than finding justice at a lynching.
(Robert Kirby, Salt Lake Tribune, p. C1, 1 September 2006.)

Pretty Good Week

Things have been interesting for me over the last seven days or so. Here are the three main items that come to mind.

Be Our Guest
First, I went to an orientation for substitute teachers for one of the local school districts last Thursday. It was a lot different than I expected. I was expecting a lot of talk about policies and procedures, how to use SubFinder (the computerized telephone registration system the district uses), that sort of thing. We spent about 45 minutes of the 8:00-1:30 training session covering that. The rest of the time, we talked about being teachers.

This district has an interesting focus on the whole substitute teaching thing. They don't refer to us as substitutes. The term this district uses is 'Guest Teacher'. Sure, it sounds like just a semantic difference, but the attitude is similarly different. They expect productivity from their students when the regular teacher isn't there, and they train the replacements on how they're most likely to get it. I don't know that any other district in the area even gives their subs any training. The district I worked with last year certainly didn't.

This district also has an interesting pay scale. The other districts in the area, to my knowledge, have two pay rates for subs: a certified rate and a non-certified rate. This district has a whole scale based on education, experience, and the type of assignment. When I brought in the paperwork, I was told to bring in a copy of my transcript showing I was a college graduate. This put me in the Grade II pay scale. During the course of the training, though, I talked to the facilitator (Pam) and mentioned that I had just started working on a Master's degree. She said that made me a Grade IV—which raises my hourly wage by more than two dollars.^* She said the fact that I'm already enrolled in a degree program that will lead to licensure could also make me eligible for a full-time position under the right circumstances. I'd be all for that.

Anyway, I got a phone call a couple of days ago. It was from an algebra teacher in one of the district's schools. She's having surgery later this month, and she needs a substitute for 4-6 weeks. So we swapped information, and it looks like I'm going to be a full-time math teacher for a few weeks this fall. Shiny!

I got another call during gaming last night. It was a teacher at the district's technical high school downtown. She's going to a wedding next Thursday and Friday, and she needs someone to cover her anatomy and physiology classes. So it looks like my first crack at being a science teacher is now less than a week away—even if I'm only going to be a Guest Teacher. I'm pretty psyched.

Fun and Games
As I mentioned earlier, I've been gaming recently. I've been taking the express bus up to Ogden to hang out with the OGC three times a month or so. I've been doing that pretty consistently since the first of the year. It's been a lot of fun. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed role-playing games, especially Champions.

After several months of playing a handful of different characters in different campaigns, I decided I was ready for the next step: GM'ing my own campaign. I haven't been a Game Master in years (literally), so this is kind of a big deal. And I decided to shoot the moon with it: a detailed, serial, epic-feeling campaign. The players are playing characters who have been gathered together secretly to try to prevent an alien invasion. We're two sessions in, and the players don't seem to be showing any signs of boredom just yet. That's a good sign. I've been trying to throw out a lot of detail, background information, and foreshadowing as we go. The players are responding well. Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.

One Down
The first class in any program at Western Governors University is called Education Without Boundaries (EWB). It's intended to acquaint students with the distance learning process, to establish relationships between the students and with their mentor, and to assess the incoming students' content knowledge, writing skills, and the like. I finished EWB on Tuesday.

It was a much bigger deal than I thought it was going to be. I missed a couple of 'school days' at the beginning of August due to our road trip, and I seem to have lost a few more days in the middle of the month that I can't account for. Long story short, by the time I made my to-do list last Monday, I had two full weeks' worth of school work to do and 8 days to do it in.

So basically, I had two choices: get motivated, or panic. In the past, the panic option might have appealed to me. But that was before I was a college graduate. Now I know by experience that I can make it through practically anything—even quantum mechanics—if I set my mind to it. So I got motivated. I finished up Module Three, with the exception of one paper, by Thursday. Then I started on Module Four and stormed my way through most of that pretty quickly. By Monday, I had two papers left to write and two days in which to do them.

One of the two papers was to explore the evolution of a scientific theory and to explain how theories can change based on experimentation and evidence. We were to choose a theory and explore it in depth. This assignment was easy for me because I did almost exactly the same thing for a class two years ago as an undergraduate. In that class, I had to create a WebQuest assignment on some topic related to my content area. I did mine on atomic theory and The Evolution of the Atom. So I had not only a topic, but all the reference material I needed. I wrote the paper with minimal difficulty.

(By the way, can I just mention here how much I'm coming to dislike APA Style? I've been using ACS^** style for the past several years, and I'm used to that style for formatting, citations, and so forth. It's precise, but it's also flexible. It works for me. On the other hand, APA Style is far more rigid with regard to formatting, but the citations are a mess. The in-text citation style gets in the way of what you're reading, and the references themselves are vague. I could pull out something obscure from a 900-page textbook, and as long as I cite the author and year of publication, I'm fine. I don't even need to cite the page number! Do they really expect people reading a five-page paper to wade through a 900-page textbook to verify a source? What a joke.)

That left just one paper: a read-and-summarize exercise on the topic of biodiversity. This one gave me a lot of trouble. There were seven different electronic resources to explore on this topic. Five of them were informative but otherwise unremarkable web sites. The sixth was a 15-chapter online book. The last was a 59-page PDF document published by the Harvard Medical School. I was able to make sense of what I was reading (for the most part). But I had trouble trying to synthesize all of it into a 500-word paper.

I started the biodiversity paper on Thursday, and by Tuesday I still didn't have a much better idea what I was supposed to do with it. So I did some re-reading, took a few notes, and started writing, hoping that it would take me in some coherent direction. And after a while, I started to make some sense of it all. By 11:00 a.m., I had a good start on the paper.

Then the power went out.

We live in one of the older neighborhoods in Salt Lake City. The average house on our block was built in the 1950's or late 1940's.^*** The power grid seems similarly old, and we get power spikes about once a month. Sometimes they only last a few moments, but we had one earlier this summer that lasted more than 12 hours. I was hoping this would be one of the former. By 11:30 I'd given up that hope. So I disconnected my tower and hauled it to work.^*†

We have literally scores of computers where I work, so it wasn't hard to cannibalize a couple of them and get a mouse, keyboard, and monitor hooked up to my tower. Then I started back to work. I actually took advantage of another computer by looking up all the references on the work computer while typing on my own. As things started coming together, I began to realize that I was running about 100 words too long. Yes, verbosity can be a problem for me sometimes.^† So I started editing. Finally, at about 3:30, I finished the paper and submitted it. Mission accomplished.

I also got to talk to my Mentor on Tuesday night. We had a nice chat about what I'd done so far and what was coming up next. I don't know all the details, but it looks like it's going to get more complex, and more interesting, from here.

So, that's my pretty good week. It'll be interesting to see what next week brings.

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^* Which still makes the hourly wage less than what I make at my 'real' job, but the experience is good.

^** For the curious, ACS is the American Chemical Society, and APA is the American Psychological Association. Maybe I'm biased, but I'm sensing a difference between hard science and soft science here.

^*** The amazing thing is that there are four different houses on our block for sale, and the least expensive one is $375,000. The highest price is $514,000. I had no idea I've been living in a neighborhood with half-million dollar houses.

^*† When I got home that night, I could tell by the time flashing on all the clocks when the power had come back on. It was within 15 minutes of when I'd left. Go figure.

^† This will come as no surprise to regular readers.