ditdotditdotdit: College Algebra is not rocket science. . .

. . .or so sayeth one of the brainiac tutors who helps me in the math lab, but dern (or is it "durn?") if I can graph a page full of functions without getting a headache and feeling like running around in circles [with a radius of 1/2 cubit, whose center is at (-1, 7)] just to make myself feel normal again. AAAAAAAAAA, but I will triumph. I only have one really cerebral class this summer (I'm also taking a gym class but I don't really have to study much for that, hee. I hope like heck my gym teacher never reads this, cuz she can totally kick my patushka. Have you noticed how often I like to veer off on totally unrelated parenthetical tangents?) so I CAN DO IT. It's funny, but for some reason I seem to understand my assignments better if I'm doing them in the math lab, even if no one is helping me. Maybe it's because it's a learning environment, without all the distractions like laundry and the dog and the tv that I have at home. Or maybe it's all the brain waves from the Math People (da da DAAAAH) flying around the room and helping me understand via osmosis. I don't know. Either way, I love the people of the math lab. Do you hear me, people who can make jokes about things like asymptotes and parabolas and cube roots and the quadratic formula and get why they're funny? I LOVE YOU. You're the meaning in my life, you're the inspiration, you give meaning to my life, you're the inspiration. I never really noticed how redundant that line was until just now. Stupid Chicago!!! I bet they don't know how to find the equation of a line when given 2 points by calculating the slope and putting it into slope-intercept form!!! Let's see Peter Cetera try to find a polynomial of minimum degree that has the given zero!!! Just because they can count all the way to whatever number album they're on now, sure as the dickens doesn't mean they know how to solve systems of linear equations using the Gauss-Jordan elimination on augmented matrices!!! I have no idea what I just said!!! So take that, Messrs. "25 or 6 to 4" (what, you think you can impress us with ratios? YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHO YOU'RE DEALING WITH, MESSRS. I like using the word "messrs.")!!! This here is an exclusive club, and you, and all your lowly ilk, are not invited to the party. So there!!! *makes really mature raspberry sounds and sticks her thumbs in her ears and waggles her fingers at Chicago*

And that concludes this post-"I just spent 3 and 1/2 hours in the math lab NOT doing rocket science" insanity session. Have a lovely!!!

Oh, yeah: Just so you know, I don't have to do any problems as complicated as that monstrosity at the top of the post. It was just for dramatic effect. Most of the stuff I do is more like: