I had gotten an email from the library telling me that when I had returned some dvds earlier this week, one of the cases was empty. It seems that in a post-paperwriting stupor, I had forgotten to take the disc out of the player. I was late catching the bus because it took me far more time than you'd think it would to find an empty cd case to put the thing in so it wouldn't get scratched.
It's not the first bus that makes you late. I've found that regardless of if I miss the first bus or not, I can still manage to make it to class anywhere from fifteen minutes early to ten minutes late.
So, first bus, train, then an unusually long wait at the station for the 145. The lines snaked out the bus shelter and had flooded the traffic island by the time a bus finally arrived. I was lucky enough to manage to get on through one of the back doors and we were off.
Other than the fact that I was about five minutes late at that point, things were going relatively well.
However, while we were approaching the intersection at the bottom of Gaglardi, there was a loud thump, the bus lurched forward and the front end of it dropped about a foot before it came to a halt. The driver did a walk-around and then uncerimoniously asked us to leave the bus.
We stood at the side of the highway for a while, hitching rides until everyone had been picked up. I caught another bus.
I finally got to class half an hour late, and decided not to disturb anyone, so I took the dvd back to the library and then wandered around until the class break.
Apparently I didn't miss much. At the beginning of class the prof announced that there was a quiz and he was immediately peppered with questions and never got around to it. Then someow or other the prof and the guy who always sits in the front row got into a rather explosive argument.
You know the guy. He's always eating jam straight from the jar, checking his email and asking useless questions, the kind that I'm guessing are supposed to challenge the prof and make you sound extra intelligent, but instead, waste time and make you look like an idiot. He always manages to start some sort of pointless argument over a completely moot point.
I've said it before about another guy. Twice. I don't mind when people ask legitimate questions for clarification or extra examples or bring up important points that the prof seems to have overlooked, but if it's something stupid and leads to a conversation like this:
"Do we have to memorize the equations?"or:
"No, they will be provided for you, just like they were on the last exam."
"What will the equation sheet look like?"
"It will look the same as the last one, only it will have more equations on it."
"Do we get to see it before the exam?"
"Yes, it's been posted on the website since the beginning of the semester." (he says, while demonstrating where to find it on the website on the big screen, only to find that that one page is missing)
"So, where is it, exactly?" (smiling because he's finally nailed the prof with the incredibly humiliating evidence proving that oh my god! one miniscule piece of the huge, complicated course website doesn't work!)
"It seems to be missing. However, if you click on this link here, it will show you the equation page for the final exam, which has all the same equations plus a few you haven't learned yet."
"But the equation page for the second exam isn't available?"
"No, it looks like it isn't."
"So, we won't get to see it before the exam?"
"No, I guess you won't."
"So, we won't get to see it before the exam...."
"I don't think the marking on the last assignment was fair."So, I can only imagine what he said today.
"Why do you think that?"
"Well, you marked the answers wrong because I calculated all my own z-scores -"
"Why did you do that? All the z-scores are in the table at the back of the book."
"Well, I was calculating them myself..."
"You don't need to do that. I spent a lot of time putting that table together and I'm pretty confident that all the values are correct."
"But they were marked wrong..."
"In this course, all the answers are based on the values in the table. I would suggest you use them."
"But what if they are wrong?"
"I'm pretty confident that the table is correct. You're welcome to use anything you want, but if you want to get the answers right, I would suggest you use the table provided for you."
"But I wanted to calculate them myself..."
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