Nostalgia Gland

I'd be lying if I said there was a time this school year where I didn't miss camp and all my camp friends. However, now that the school year is winding down (only 15 days of classes left, but who's counting?), I find myself practically giddy at the thought of returning to camp. I realize that reliving all of the moments that made last summer's camp so great during this summer is unrealistic, but I anticipate new great moments this summer. There are some particular events, though, that have been tickling my nostalgia gland as of late (the nostalgia gland is a very real body organ. It's located near the gall bladder and secretes nostalgialymine, which, obviously, causes nostalgia).

For instance, hiding out in the kitchen's fridge on especially hot days. This happened a lot of times, on any day of the week. During quick dip (a free time for the kids in the evening) was the most common time for me, among other counselors and staff, to venture in to the fridge. On one day in particular, there were a few of us in the fridge - Stever, Rae, Kiana, and myself, I believe - and we were hungry. It just so happened that there were also cookies in the fridge. We started eating cookies, except Rachel because she was doing some crazy thing where she cut out all sweets from her diet. A surprising amount of counselors did this during the summer, which just meant more for me, so I could dig it. Whilst eating a cookie, I remembered there was some left over frosting in the fridge, too. I found it, spread some on my cookie, and almost cried happy tears (I've never actually cried happy tears, but this is the closest I ever got). This was enough to convince Rae to make a one-time exception to her no-sweets rule, and I guarantee she does not regret it. No, really, she said that was one of her favorite moments of camp. That's how good the frosting was.

Another event is a recurring event. Before I say what it was, you have to promise not to judge me. Promise? Okay. The recurring event was lying to the campers. Not a week went by where I didn't fabricate something ridiculous, and the kids just ate it up every time. I'm not the only one who did this, by the way - it was fairly common. No big lies, though, don't worry. For example, one counselor, Kaia, and myself would tell the kids that we were married. They believed it every single time. I'm pretty sure the rest of the staff got pretty sick of this one, because we were "married" every week, and were believable enough to convince 10 year olds we were actually married. My favorite lie ever, though, was when I convinced my cabin I used to play in the NBA. Basketball is a common free time game - specifically the basketball game of "Lightning." One day, I was unbeatable. Actually, most days I was unbeatable. One day in particular, though, I was on fire (not literally) and one of my campers said something like, "Joe, you never lose!" I laughed and said, "Well I'd hope not! A former NBA player shouldn't be losing games of lightning!" His mouth dropped, but he didn't quite believe me.

"You didn't play in the NBA!"

"Yes I did."

"Oh, yeah? Who did you play for?"

"...The Milwaukee Bucks." That was the most random team I could think of.

"Really?! How long ago? I've never heard of you in the NBA before."

"Oh, yeah, ummm, let's see here. My rookie season was '96. I only played for four years, though."

"'96? How old are you?"

"30." The two-fer lie. Classic. During the conversation, I kept shooting hoops and they kept going in, making my claim a little more believable. At this point, the rest of my cabin was gathered around and listening in on the conversation, challenging my "facts." The final story was that I didn't get drafted, but signed with the Bucks. I didn't play very much (I wanted to make it believable more than anything), and that's why I retired after only four seasons. Also, I once challenged Michael Jordan to a game of PIG before a game, but he just laughed at me. I told my cabin he was scared. They totally bought it.

The last event that I'm going to write about (there are so many more, I couldn't possibly cover them all in just one post) is from the last week of camp. My "wife," Kaia, was leaving a few days early to go to some wedding or some other lame excuse. At around 10:30 on Kaia's last night at camp, after I had already declared "light's out" in my cabin, Bjorn, another counselor, knocked on my door.

"Joe," he said. "Put some clothes on and come with me."

"Wha-? Yeah, okay. Be right there." I thought something serious was going on. Bjorn had a very serious tone and an even more serious look on his face. A little panicked, I threw on some clothes real quick-like and hurried out the door. I followed Bjorn for literally about ten feet - from my cabin to the top of the lodge (the top of the lodge is the upstairs to our dining hall). We tried to open the door to the top of the lodge, but it was locked. Bjorn knocked and announced that it was he and I at the door. I heard some whispers, then running. The door burst open and Kaia flew out and landed in my arms. She wanted to say goodbye since she was leaving early the next morning. The whispers I heard were from her and Rae, who was also in the top of the lodge. As the four of us stood there talking, Linnae, the program director, walked by. "Joe," she began to interrogate, "don't you have a cabin to look after?"

"Umm, well, yes. But I mean, it's right there," I pointed to my cabin. "If anything happens, I'd be able to see it."

"Hmm, alright. Have a good night, you guys!" and she walked off.

About two minutes later, we went into the top of the lodge, totally destroying my excuse of being able to see my cabin. In the top of the lodge, all four of us were completely delirious, laughing hysterically at the slightest provocation. For about an hour, we just sat and talked. I also got a face massage, but there was talking during that, too. Eventually, Rae, Kaia, and Bjorn convinced me to go back to my cabin. By 'convinced' I mean 'forced.' That was probably a good idea, though.

These memories, along with many more, helped make last summer at camp one of the best summers ever. And just think, in two months, I'll be right back at camp, crushing the children's dreams of beating an ex-NBA player in a game of lightning.

Suppressed Memories: AP Calc (Michelle Made Me Write This)

I know I've posted about my high school AP Calc class before, but this one is going to be a little different. It's also probably going to be a bit longer. Probably. I don't write rough drafts for my blog, so I don't really know. It's all up in the ol' noggin. I guess we'll just see how much of these suppressed memories I can recall. Also, if you're wondering who Michelle is, Michelle Yordi is a dear friend and former classmate. She's having a rough week and loves nothing more than reading about my suffering. Out of the kindness of my heart, and since all I do is give, I've decided to write an unprecedented ninth post this month.

I know I've mentioned my teacher from this class, Ms. H, before. Let me just reminisce a little bit. I remember, on multiple occasions, she would make me throw my school-issued breakfast in the garbage. "I don't allow food in my classroom." Despite my highly logical and well thought out argument that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and will allow me to think better and, given my current grade, being able to think better is clearly necessary for my success, I still had to dispose of my breakfast. Just think about how unfair that is - I didn't have time for breakfast at my house, so I got breakfast at school - I paid for breakfast at school - and she makes me throw it away. Now I'm under nourished and don't have the brain capacity to understand Calculus, especially when taught by a sub-par teacher. Ms. H also loved to not let me go get a drink of water. Denying me the most essential facet of human life? And she wouldn't deny everyone - just me. I remember one particular instance my mouth was dry. I mean really dry - like the Sahara desert or something. I told Ms. H this and asked if I could go get a drink. "No," was the answer. I asked why and she gave me some lame reason like, "I don't want people in the hallway" or something. I noticed there was a sink in the classroom. "Ms. H, can I get a drink from the sink? That's not in the hallway, and it gives water. Everybody wins." Again, the answer was no. Now, the sequence that followed was when Michelle showed how evil she is. I can almost guarantee that she wasn't even thirsty, but she went up to Ms. H and said, "Ms. H, we have matching pencils! ...Can I get a drink?" Ms. H said yes to that! I wasn't going to stand for that! "Ms. H, are you kidding me right now?! I'm back here dying of thirst and you don't let me get a drink, but Michelle has the same pencil as you, and she gets to get a drink? I bet she's not even thirsty!" Ms. H just laughed. So did Michelle. When Michelle came back, I was still angry. And still thirsty. "Seriously, Joe, you should just get a drink from the sink. Ms. H is busy right now - she won't even notice!" This is what Michelle said to me. She was right - Ms. H was busy. I got up, sneakily, and went over to the sink. I turned on the cold water and started to drink from the faucet when I hear, "Pssst! Ms. H! Look what Joe's doing!" You know who said that? You know who ratted me out? Michelle. Yep. She planned that! I got in trouble for trying to survive. Michelle got a drink and the satisfaction of seeing me get in trouble. It was ridiculous. That's not all, though. Michelle got to keep a plant in Ms. H's classroom. I mean, seriously? A plant? You know what I got to keep in Ms. H's classroom? My D letter grade, and not my breakfast. Michelle gets a plant, and I get to throw my breakfast in the garbage. I don't...I can't even...

Not all memories are bad, though. One time, Ms. H wasn't in class, and Damian (my friend and college roommate my freshman year) texted her. I have no idea how, when, or why he got her number, but he did. He, Mark, Freddy (more friends), and I were wondering where something was. Or something. I don't remember. Anyway, Damian texted Ms. H, and she replied with, "No texting in class! ;)" Yes, that is a winking face. An important note: Damian had this really creepy pretend-crush (sometimes I was pretty sure it wasn't pretend) on Ms. H, and everybody in the class knew it. Ms. H favored Damian because she didn't know it may have been pretend. So, Damian got the winky-face text and showed everyone in the class. When Ms. H came back, she never heard the end of it, and it was fantastic. One day we were doing something with magazines where we had to cut them up and glue something...I don't remember. I have no idea how it pertained to Calculus, but someone found an article about how the winky-face is very flirty/sexual and gave it to Ms. H. Phenomenal.

That's one good memory. The vast majority are bad memories, such as the AP Calc exam. I know for a fact that I've written about this before, but for the sake of relevance, I will revisit this subject. The AP exam was to determine whether or not I had wasted the year taking AP Calc by giving me college credits if I scored at least a 3 out of 5 (or 6, maybe - I don't really know. I focused mainly on the 3 because I knew whatever was the potential high score was out of my range). The weeks prior to the exam, all we did in class was review. Or, in my case, give one last attempt to learn the material. I grasped a couple of concepts, and I felt mildly confident that I could, with a lot of luck, manage to get a 3. "Mildly" as in "35%." Well, the day of the AP exam came, and I had no chance. I left at least half of the multiple choice questions blank (you're supposed to leave them blank if you don't know because you lose points for wrong answers, but lose nothing (and gain nothing) from leaving answers blank). Then came the free response section. I think I answered half of the questions in the calculator free response section, and I left all of the answers blank in the no calculator free response section. Instead, on the last question, I wrote this letter:

To whom it may concern,

As you may have noticed, I have not answered, attempted to answer, or even written anything down for any of the questions in this section. But do not think that I didn't try, or don't care, because I did, and for the most part, do. To be honest, I have no idea how to do any part of any of the questions in the no calculator free response section of the 2009 AP Calculus AB Exam. I do not even know how to pretend to know how to answer these questions. Normally, in a situation like the one I find myself in now, I would make up work, or B.S. my way through this, but I don't know what work for these problems is supposed to look like. In all honesty, I don't even consider Calculus to be a form of Mathematics. It deals too much with symbols and letters (aka variables), even more so than numbers in some cases, to be considered math.

While writing this, I decided to go back to question number 4 and label my nonexistent answers, because on the problems we did in preparation for this exam, I got points for that. Unfortunately, that is the closest I can come to giving an answer to any of the questions in this section. I consider this a failure of epic proportions. Please do not think less of me for it.

-Joe Russell (Calculus Master)

That is verbatim what I wrote. It took me about ten minutes to realize I wouldn't be able to answer any of the questions, and that gave me about 50 minutes to write that letter. So I wrote it, and then wrote it on a scrap piece of paper so I could keep it. I got a 1 on that exam, and no response to my letter, which was a pretty fitting end to that class.

Also, I just want to say that the reason I did so poorly in this class was not lack of effort. I mean, it kind of was. I started out with pretty decent effort, but Ms. H is a bad teacher. Anyone who has had her before will vouch for that. Sitting through a lecture in which she tried to teach a concept was just sad. She didn't know what she was talking about and, consequently, I had no idea how to do the homework, which lead to poor scores on quizzes and tests. She'd say, "Well, if you don't understand it, come in before class or after school and I'll help you." Firstly, there's no way she could've helped. She didn't know the material, either. Secondly, I tried to come in before school multiple times and was not helped. After doing poorly on the first few quizzes and tests, I realized that no matter how much effort I put forth, I was not going to succeed, which is simultaneously the most depressing and the most relieving feeling one will ever experience. So I decided to stop giving my best effort. My grade pretty much stayed the same, and I wasn't really sad about it anymore. That's about as close to a win-win as you can get with Calculus.