much better today

I had a rotten day yesterday, mostly due to the fact that high-school freshmen can be brats.

But then I went to my Chemistry class, with the sophomores and juniors whom I love so dearly, and Ryan informed me that he had to leave class early to go to the doctor, and that, while he was excited to get out of school early, he was sincerley sad to be missing my class. He is the best kiss-up I've had in a long time.

And then I went home and read the lab reports that my Chemistry students wrote, and found explanations such as Matt's "The decomposition was meant to show how violent decomposition reactions are. We heated some copper sulfate pentahydrate and five minutes later it turned gray," and Mikey's "We then placed 4 drops of potassium iodide solution in a watch glass, and added 4 drops of lead nitrate solution wondering what could possibly happen this time, and as soon as contact was established, it turned bright yellow. Astounding," which made me want to give them both A's, until I considered that it's probably not appropriate to use sarcasm (or run-on sentences, for that matter) in a formal write-up. So I let them build rockets today instead of discussing empirical formulas, the whole class was entirely grateful, and everyone was happy.

And my freshmen were not such brats today, mainly because I told them that if they could catch the $20 bill I dropped, they could keep it. Nobody caught it, because you'd have to have a .17 second reaction time. Which none of them do. Suckers!!