He asked somebody to raise their hand and ask him when we would use calculus in our everyday life. So one student rose their hand and asked, “When are we going to use this in our everyday life?”

“NEVER!!” the teacher exclaimed. “You will never use calculus in your normal, everyday life. In fact, very few of you will use it in your professional careers either.” Then he paused. “So would you like to know why should care?”

Several us nodded.

He picked out one of the varsity football players in the class. “You practice football a lot during the week, right Tim?” asked the teacher.

“Yeah,” replied Tim. “Almost every day.”

“Do you and your teammates ever lift weights during practice?”

“Yeah. Tuesdays and Thursdays we spend a lot of practice in the weight room.”

“But why?” asked the teacher. “Is there ever going to be a play your coach tells you use during a game that requires you to bench press the other team?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why lift weights?”

“Because it makes us stronger,” said Tim.

“Bingo!!” said the teacher. “It’s the same thing with calculus. You’re not here because you’re going to use calculus in your everyday life. You’re here because calculus is weightlifting for your brain.”

When it’s taught right, learning math teaches you logic and how to organize your brain, how to take a problem one step at a time and make sure every step can bear weight before you move to the next one.  Most adults don’t need to know integrals, but goddamn if I don’t wish everyone making arguments on the internet understood geometric proofs.

Scientific concepts broaden our understanding of how the world is put together, which does not mean that most adults ever really understand how light is refracted through a lens or why spinning copper wire creates electricity–and they don’t need to.  But science classes in general are meant to teach the scientific method: how to make observations and use them to draw conclusions, how to test those conclusions, how to be wrong and grow stronger from it.

History isn’t about dates and names of battles, it’s about people, patterns, things we’ve tried before and ought to learn from.  It’s about how everything is linked, how changing one circumstance can lead to changes in fifty others, cascading infinitely.  Literature is about critical thinking, pattern recognition, learning to listen to what somebody is saying and decide what it means to you, how you feel about it, and what you want to do with it.

Some facts matter: every adult should know how to read a graph, how global warming works, some of the basic themes and symbols that crop up in every piece of fiction.  But ultimately, content is less important later in life than context.

shoutout to the bane of my existence, the “i left my significant other(s) behind in the mortal plane because i’m a self-sacrificing dingus” squad. i love them all dearly but boy do they make the ghost AU just the teensiest bit more depressing.

also i had no clue what to do for the background, so they get to float in chiaki’s computer void.

* New student, very small. Grace said it was pebble. Pebble is small Earth rock. Pebble likes name.

* He found out Eridians have no gender rules.

* Students brought him mineral sample. After he stopped crying he said he loves show-and-tell game. Human naming conventions oddly literal.

* I told him Earthsun grew bright.

* I took him up atop atmosphere bypass elevator to look at stars.

* He woke up from nap and found me still with him. I did not wait on his chest; he says I am heavy like “elephant” and he “couldn’t breathe.” I laid my arm over him instead, kept him close, feeling safe. He said “cuddle” was warm.

* Before class he heard younglings singing.

* He has plants in house from sprouts on ship. Plant grew “bud.”

* Engineers got seawater temperature right. He took off shoes and stood in water, sighing. He didn’t care about pants getting damp. Cried until shirt was also damp. Humans very endlessly wet.

* He missed “Doritos.”

* Adrian helped food scientists make taumoeba dried paste. Made it crunchy after heating. We fused it into triangle form. Told him it was Tauritos. That made him laugh-cry. Laugh-cry is rare and precious.

* He remembered Eridians have no gender rules.

* We made him celebration outfit. Used metals he calls pretty. He can see frequencies named “colorful” and “shiny.” These make humans happiest.

* I gave him hug when he wasn’t expecting it. Easier to hug close now with exosuit. Hug when Grace sitting down so he does not fall over.

Crisps vs Chips: I gotta admit, the Brits have this one. They're thin slices of potato that have been made crispy. No chipping of any materials involved.

Car Park vs Parking Lot: Equally matched. What's a car park? A place to park cars. What's a parking lot? An otherwise empty lot where you can park.

wordle in 2: misleading. you may think that this is the highest achievement, but it suffers from the same disappointment of a lucky guess that wordle in 1 causes. your second guess is a strategic choice, but ending the game this early just isn't interesting

wordle in 3: the peak. your starting word gave you some information and then your second guess contextualized that information into a solvable position. your sharp intuition and restraint is what truly separates you as above average.

wordle in 4: statistically average, par for the course, the baseline against which all other wordles are compared.

wordle in 5: you're sweating. you made a mistake at some point, or your starting word was effectively useless, and it took an extra guess above average to close things out. wordle in 5 comes as a relief.

wordle in 6: crushing humiliation. you have technically succeeded but at what cost. your thirty square grid will stare back at you like barrels of a firing squad. a failure in all but name.

Recipient of a third-degree burn in front of witnesses. IE, "I won't take that shit from a man dressed like a ghostbuster"= "Gostbuster" or "Buster"

A distinctive personal feature or quirk. IE, "Have you noticed how that new guy is always eating bell peppers?" = "Peppers", or "That chick has a massive forehead" = "Forehead".

An embarrassing thing you said or did. IE, "Did you seriously call Dale "Dad"?" = "Junior", "Baby boy", "Sport"

A game of name-mutation telephone. IE, "Donny Clyde" = "Bonnie 'n' Clyde" = "Bonnie" = "Bon-bon".

Irony. IE, calling a tall person "short stack" or a particularly dour person "sunshine".

A 'wrong place wrong time' one-off incident. IE, "He spilled oil on his pants and had to borrow a pair that were way too big and Jim saw him with the waistband pulled up to his nipples and called him 'Parachute'"

A batman-style origin story but not in a cool way: "One time she hit a deer with the company car and when she called the boss to tell her she was crying so hard we thought she was dying" = "Bambi"

The incredibly rare 'admiration' nickname, bourne only once a millennia under the light of the blood moon: "We saw him lift a truck once so now we call him 'iron man'"

+ How Nicknames Stick:

Your fate is determined by The Counsel

You hate it