Here's Your Pencil, Welcome To Hell... Or Not

My first Cuesta class was today.  Math 127 in room 2408.  Algebra.  Math has never been my strong point, and it holds no place of affection in my heart.  The fact that I would be taking a semester-long college course of math with college students frankly unnerved me.

Mom drove me up to class (ordinarily I will take the bus, but as it was my first day Mom had to see me off.  The same old story: mothers sniff tearfully into their tissues while their kids waltz off into kindergarten without a glance behind) and we arrived fifteen minutes early.  Probably not the best thing to do.  I spent the next ten minutes watching the students drive by and making comments about the niceness of all of them.

"Oh, they look mean," I told mom, pointing out three girls all heavily tattooed and pierced.  "I hope they're not in my class."  Mom looked up from her book (The Wheel of Time: Book 1) just enough to glance at the girls and murmur, "I'm sure they're very nice."

My class started at 7, and at 6.50 I hopped out of the car.  The butterflies in my stomach has turned to snakes that slithered about inside.  I turned to wave goodbye to Mom 

(who, I later discovered, didn't even leave the parking lot for the two hours I was there) and headed to my class.

It was bigger than the average highschool classroom, but smaller than a lecture hall.  There were computers at every desk, which I pushed aside to make room for my books.

My teacher is a very nice woman (born in Canada, French is her first language) who gives bonus points if we catch a mistake that she writes on the board.  (Don't ALL teachers give extra credit for that?  And don't ALL teachers make mistakes on purpose to see if their students are paying attention?)  The entire class period was spent going over the syllabus and the expectations and when the final exam would be (we're speaking of this ALREADY??).

When we had thirty minutes left, she organized---in the loosest sense of the word---into groups.  I was with three other college girls.  One was a pretty, dark-haired young woman who looked to have some Indian blood in her.  Another looked like the daughter from Gilmore Girls, a very cute gal with glasses.  The other was a slightly larger girl who evidently had some self-esteem problems.  

We were handed a worksheet with 35 problems and given thirty minutes to get twenty done.  I ended up leading the group and helping these three college girls with their basic Algebra.  A fifteen year old sophomore helping college students.  Right on, right on.  By the end, Indie and Gilmore Girl were passing me their papers to see if they did the problems right and asking me questions.

College might not be so bad, after all.