By Mia Hanuska and Kathryn Tanaka
For the past five months, we spent our Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday afternoons at Lynbrook High School from 4 – 5:35 pm studying intermediate calculus, or calculus 3. Among 35 fellow high schoolers, primarily from Lynbrook, we’ve learned the ins and outs of line integrals, equations of 3-dimensional planes, Jacobians, triple integrals, and flux (bleh…).
Teaching the concurrent enrollment course from West Valley College, our professor for the class never failed to unintentionally make us chuckle. He was a big fan of lore dropping mid-class, often telling us about his life as we worked on the confusing example problems. Between stories, he’d chastise us for taking so long to solve the problems, constantly stating “you guys need more time? What about on final? You fail final.” He clearly had nothing but the utmost confidence in us! Whenever the class looked slightly confused about a concept, he liked to tell us “convince yourself.” In other words, he was a complete icon.
Looking back on the semester, we decided to forever memorialize our time in his class by ranking his most memorable stories and comments.
#8: “Your pencil is too big. Using is bad for your heart.”
He made this comment to Mia, who uses the Uni Alpha Gel 0.5mm mechanical pencil, a fairly normal-sized pencil. I (Mia) then told him I used to use smaller pencils, but they hurt my hands, and that I’ve been using this pencil for the past four years with no issues. To this remark he looked incredibly surprised, as if using my “large” pencil should’ve killed me years ago. Not quite sure what he meant with this, but I think I’ll be okay with my large pencil.
#7: Disassociating midway through a lesson
Okay, this one requires some background information. The day’s topic of lecture was delta-epsilon limits, which, to those unaware, make literally no sense (to us, at least). Now picture this: 35 students awkwardly turned towards the whiteboard, whispering among themselves, as the professor writes quietly on the board. He pauses for a minute, staring at his work:
|xyx2+y2-0| = |x2y2x2+y2| |y2| |x2+y2| = |(x-0)2+(y-0)2<
Clearly unfinished yet quite visibly confused, he just stands in front of the board, looking up and down at his page of notes he was copying and back to the board. He erases half the second half with a satisfied “aha!” but then, after examining his notes, writes it the same way again. Perhaps his head got tired, because for a while, he just stood and stared, almost disassociating with his work. #RelatableKing
#6: “No photos…I’m not photogenic”
On the first day of class, we learned our professor wouldn’t post any lectures, but he would let us take photos of the whiteboard to refer to later or send to friends. Since attendance isn’t mandatory, this helped a whole lot of people who ended up with conflicts (cough…Kathryn…cough). However, we were given one requirement for our photos: under absolutely no circumstances were we to post them online or include our professor in them. As he kept telling us, “I’m not photogenic, take no photos of me.” But we don’t think he’ll have many issues with people posting his lectures online…his specific lectures aren’t that in demand.
#5: Entire life story (focusing on his poor English)
Throughout the first few units, we slowly got bits and pieces of our professor’s entire life story. Delaying his lessons, he’d go so far in-depth into his life, telling us about life back in Vietnam and how he settled on becoming a math professor. As the story goes, apparently he wanted to be a doctor, but due to his poor English, he was forced to stick to math because “I speak math good; English, not so much.” While we don’t think his accent is too bad, for the first month or so he repeatedly apologized for his English, adding new information (or just repeating the same story) each time. While his hopes of becoming a doctor never came to fruition, he did tell us about helping his wife while his son was born. Allegedly, after catching his baby after it came out the womb, the supervising doctor told him he should’ve become a doctor.
#4: Door Slamming or PTSD?
As you may recall, California experienced some torrential downpours in October and November. With the biting winds howling outside our cozy classroom, our professor elected to keep the door shut during lectures. However, we guess Lynbrook is too poor to afford the things that make the door shut quietly, so it’s always slamming super loudly if you don’t stop it. Day after day, he reminded us to stop the door before it hit the frame, but…it wasn’t enough to stop the habitual negligence of high school students. Every time the door banged shut, he would flinch and curl into himself, covering his ears before lecturing the class once again on the importance of gently shutting the door. On the bright side, it seems like making it through UC Berkeley’s undergrad CS program is less traumatic than a door slamming shut!
#3: Class Average too High on Midterm
After receiving our first midterm, we found out the class average was a whopping 94%, a percentage incredibly high for a college course. He seemed impressed, although slightly disappointed in his test-making abilities, that we were able to score so well. On the next midterm, the class average was a slightly lower 86.4%—to which he was much happier with. Not happy enough, though, as he stressed he wanted our scores lower. We think he was literally praying on our downfalls, maybe even hiring an Etsy witch or two, because on the next midterm, the class scored a 73.34% on average. We think we saw true joy on his face after writing down this percent on the board, finally content with our class mean.
#2: Typical Berkeley Student
Upon arriving in the US, our professor went to UC Berkeley, majoring in Computer Science, as one does. However, a four-year path obviously wasn’t rigorous enough, so he graduated in three semesters instead. Looking out into the crowd of young, aspiring math sweats, he lamented about his daily routine. To start the morning, he woke up at 6 AM to attend three lectures, then off he went to work at the car wash until midnight. For dinner, it was Wendy’s or McDonald’s (if he was feeling frisky). Then he studied until 3 AM to complete the 20+ credits he was taking in a single semester (“21 credits first semester, 28 credits second semester, 25 credits third semester!”). Concluding his brief memoir, he warned the class (but specifically the nine girls in Calc 3) what would happen if you spent a semester at MIT, Berkeley, or Stanford: you’d become ugly beyond recognition. Thank God for those Berkeley goggles.
#1: Ranking mid-term scores
Having missed the class after our first midterm (yes, there was more than one), I (Kathryn) was oblivious to the barbarically humiliating system our professor used to return our tests. After scoring our seven-question, 200-point test, our professor began class by telling everyone what the top three highest scores were. Then, he hands back the tests, naming each student out loud, in order of descending scores. I’m not sure what put it into his head to use this system, whether an innate hatred for the mental wellness of his students or simply the joy of seeing everyone’s hope gradually fetter out, but I hope he works through these issues soon.