The Math, It Burrrrrns!

I have mentioned that everything that the Navy tells us is understood as "subject to change". I didn't realize that they could exercise this mysterious power over information that existed before we ever enlisted.

..."existed before enlisted" needs to go into a song lyric somewhere. I have speculated that the real reason a certain guitarist and I ran into each other was not because we were meant for each other at all, but because he plays well and I play with words, and we were actually supposed to make some weird but great songs together. Silly Navy, coming in the way of unleashing musical genius upon this world.

To return to the original thought - I've gone through all kinds of fun math classes. Truth be told, I have a lot of fun with math. All of us ETs have - actually, to make ET at all, you have to be one of the "smart kids". They tell us this, right before explaining, "An ET is almost a Nuke."

Nukes are a separate category entirely. These guys are going to spend at least two years in A School. Where other people get 30 days confinement for a DUI or getting involved in a fight, these guys will get it if they don't do their homework. They have a very solid reputation for being absolutely brilliant, and having no common sense. The phrase, "Don't nuke the question," or, "You're nuking it," is a reference to overthinking a problem, instead of just solving what's there.

This led to Ross telling me, in answer to a frustration I'm having with a friend, "Don't nuke the relationship." Well played, my friend, well played.

So, ETs had just enough common sense to not be nukes. We're still right on the edge. And we know we're the smart kids. And we like it. What we don't like is when we know we should be able to understand a concept, and we're not getting it. This makes us mad.

I classed up with about six of my friends. None of us are in the same class, but we're going through material at the same time. And all of us were flying through, and then got bogged down like Princess Winifred going out for her morning swamp-walk when we hit a particular mathematical concept.

Because, to a one, we'd been informed by every math teacher we've had that we will never need to know the square root of any number that has more than three digits. There's no practical use for it, your calculator won't even bother with it (yes, I know, TI-89s not only do this, but also save your messages, press your shirts, clean up the breakfast dishes, pick up the kids from daycare, and call your best friend to find out exactly what did happen with that guy last night. But we don't get to use those here.), you will never, ever need to know this.

There is, in fact, a process for figuring these out. It's very tedious, which means that when I randomly mention it to my Dad (he's an engineer) and we start going through it, he stops at some point and calls it "elegant". There's a solid difference between a technician and an engineer in both the Navy and the civilian world, it turns out. :)

It's been said that the best way to learn something is to have to teach it to someone else. Interestingly, I'm pretty sure this is why I'm so confident about everything I do at Camp. But, between explaining this process to Dad, and contrasting it with how he'd do it, I think I got it!

...or, more like, I blended this process with his, and the illegitimate result has been more effective than my previous struggles. Either way, the instructor has yet to tell me that I'm doing it wrong. :)