Real Life Situations

1. You are inviting at least 20 and at most 30 people to your birthday party. (You assume that if you invite this many people then maybe someone will show up.) You want four times as many people wearing blue shirts than people wearing orange shirts. Draw a graph to show the solutions.

My head spins with the agony of trying to solve the problem. My brain melts to goo as I try to wrap my mind around what any of it means. I would have better luck trying to understand a foreign language than trying to decipher the random numbers, letters and crazy looking symbols on the page.

If I were a superhero, graph paper would be my kryptonite. It has so many tiny lines. And how am I supposed to write any letter or number on this page? I have to carefully place every digit in it's own square, but it just winds up looking stupid anyways. Oh, graph paper, how I loathe thee!

Then I read a word problem. Thank, God. Something I understand. Words! And better yet, these word problems are supposed to show me how I can use this math in real life situations. Finally something logical comes out of all this madness! But, soon, I find myself severely disappointed.

This. Is. Absurd.

Math likes to think it's so important, but it isn't as special as it thinks. Math is like your high school prom queen. Since she's in a bunch of clubs and knows so many people and has so much money, she thinks that the school would completely fall apart without her. Well, maybe it would, but really how often are you like, "Wow, I really need that prom queen around right now?" Never. Math is like that. Mathematicians create these word problems that mention things like World Geography, Bake Sales, Psychology and Carnivals, to try to make you think that you use math in everyday situations. Math, like your prom queen, likes to prove that it can be a vital factor of your everyday life.

The key word here is can. Yes, I could use a complicated math problem to decide how many people should wear what colored shirt to my birthday party, but why would I? I mean, let's say I want to buy a rather expensive giant rubber band ball. I'm sure I could think of a billion situations in which it could be useful, but most of the time, it's just going to be sitting around doing nothing. Then, when the day comes that it actually is useful, I'll rub it in every one's faces. My giant rubber band ball was useful once, in the ten years I owned it. (I actually did at one point own a rubber band ball. It was mostly just fun to toss in the air...until I lost it.)

Okay, math is important. Without math, science would be just a bunch of nonsense. It's sort of like how spelling and grammar are important to reading and writing. So, I understand, math. You're alright. But don't try to pretend that you're cooler than you are. Because, well....You're not.

Is It My Good Looks?

302 e-mails. Three hundred and two!

I would love to say that my friends and family care about me so much that they feel the need to flood my inbox with adoring e-mails, but I'm afraid that is not the case. Every e-mail is from St. Whatever's University or Something- Something College. Schools I've never even heard of reminding me that the deadline to turn in applications is only a week away.

One question invades my mind on the verge of challenging my self-confidence, but really challenging the sanity of the world. Why, dear St. Whatever's and Something- Something, would you ever want me?

Well a sinister thought comes to mind. Could it be that they just want me for my money? I mean why else would places I've never even heard of come groveling at my feet? The tuition seems to support this theory. Does it not seem like I could save a significant amount of money by choosing to go to a different school or perhaps not going to school at all. The tuition is so high that at times, it seems as if the money I would make after getting a degree from any of these schools wouldn't even be enough to pay off the loans I would need. Sometimes it seems as if working hard to succeed in the fast food industry could be a better pay off than going to college. Though considering how much of a disaster I am at what seems like possibly one of the most mindless and simplest jobs in existence, perhaps, I should go to college.

Money can't be the answer though, because I kind of lack a lot of that. If I did choose to go to any of these school's I would need scholarships, loans, grants, the works! It must be something else. Perhaps my brains. Oh, my brains. Well, considering what I just said about my current job and how epically I fail at it, I think my brains are not what these zombies want. But a glance at my grades argues this fact. Not exactly zombie fine dining, but my brains could certainly provide a delicious treat to a nice zombie family. Maybe it's my brains.....Maybe.

Something feels off though. My lack of interest in anything this school says, my failure to acknowledge the countless e-mails they send, my referring to them as brain-eating, money hungry zombies. None of it seems to point to anything that this school could be interested in.

Then it hits me! Countless e-mails....but nothing in the mail. No brochures or pamphlets! What does this mean? Well, obviously, they need pictures. They need happy attractive students on campus so that they can look like the kind of school that any cool, fun-loving person looking for a good education would want to go to.

Alright St. Whatever's University and Something- Something College. I'll apply, but you better not reject me. You need my good looks. Trust me.