Greater love hath no mother than to RE-LEARN quadratic functions, factoring, and completing the effin’ square, all because her daughter is panicking about a giant math test (that is actually not that giant), especially since everything we reviewed tonight, Kavi seemed to actually know already, and I was actually the only one being bewildered and making mistake after mistake.
(I originally wrote ‘dumb mistake,’ but I went back and took out the ‘dumb,’ because I wouldn’t want my students to write that about themselves, sigh.)
In my defense, 8 p.m. is clearly too late for anyone to be expected to learn math.
I told Kavi that she should appreciate that I was RISKING MY MARRIAGE by letting Kevin teach us this stuff, since in the process, he’d realize how slow I actually am to learn math these days (I used to be good at it, once upon a time, but that was a long, long time ago), and I really wasn’t sure he would still respect me in the morning.
Kevin responded by saying that I was underestimating how much time he spent teaching this kind of thing every day (he’s a math teacher), but I don’t really think that invalidates my point.
I admit that it was a little funny how Kev got slightly indignant when I got confused by something he was saying and resorted to looking up completing the square (which I really think should be called extracting the square, that would be much more sensible) on Wikipedia. I am not saying that Wikipedia is better at math than he is! (I might be saying that Wikipedia has better handwriting than he does, and that it’s kind of confusing when the h looks like a k, or maybe that was supposed to be an r, I’m really not sure…shh…)
Also, please appreciate my sad face. That was actually NOT because I was super-confused (although it could have been), but because we’d figured out that if I made 1000 widgets and priced them at $2 each, nobody would buy any, and I would make no profit at all. So much work! No profit! 
There is also a sad parabola that Kavi drew, which Kevin then turned into a ghost.
I’m not sure we really did anything to teach Kavi math tonight, but we got me somewhat caught up on what she knows, and Kevin says that tomorrow we’ll cover the rest of it, and practice and practice and practice the part she’s a little wobbly on, so she’ll be all ready for the final exam on Friday.
That’ll be fun.
Yay.
(It was actually my idea, that I would re-learn this math along with Kavi, because she is so stressed and unreasonably panicked about it. Next time I have a genius idea like this, maybe someone should stomp on my head until I go lie down.)
P.S. — I have mostly stopped giving mid-term exams and final exams, because the students get so hellishly stressed out about them, and now on the rare occasions when I do feel like I have to give them, I call them Big Quizzes. I don’t know if it helps the stress, but I’m trying.
