Deep down I'm a nice person. I swear.

Ok Miami, you inspired me to post again.

When I used to TA at Wes we had a book called The Book of Shame, where we would put hilarious or noteworthy student answers. Sometimes it would be really bad grammar, or something like calling a "volitile" gas "hostile", or drawing a carbon atom with five bonds (you're going to have to trust me on the last one). We never put the student's name in the book, but searching for these gems passed the time when we were grading sixty problem sets.

As a middle school/high school teacher I naturally have to be more sensitive to the failings of my students, which means I can only relate their failings to people who don't know them. Like you. Plus, this will give you an idea of my hilarious life as a teacher.

To start off I have a very smart seventh grader who likes to ask questions that are jsut far enough off topic to be annoying. For example we were talking about specialized cells on Friday (blood, muscle, etc.) and she raises her hand to ask "Do you think human cells are flamable?" (This is the same student who tries to bring up some sort of famous murder daily in class, and then gets indignant when I don;t know what she is talking about.)

One of my chem students wrote on his exam that density is an introspective property. He meant intensive, meaning the property does not change with a change in the amount of matter. Or possibly he meant that density is exceptionally self reflective for a ratio of two quantities.

And I had another seventh grader ask, "Don't only women have hormones?" In repsonse I treated the students to an unsolicited lesson on how testosterone actuallu comes from estrogen and NO WOMEN ARE NOT CONTROLLED BY HOROMONES. I spend a lot of time laughing with myself, which, really, is not any different from any earlier period in my life.