The second day of remedial math during my stay in Community College this semester was a day that I missed. Stomach pains screwed me over. Badly.
And unfortunately, because of that pain, I missed a very important conflict: an elderly woman (the lines on her face suggested eighties) got into a fight with a younger woman over who would sit in the front seat.
Hilariously enough, the elderly woman did the same on the next class meeting with another woman in class in the first row. A whole new row was made to accommodate the senior citizen student.
Because of that first encounter, most people began to shrug her off as senile and ridiculous, laughing at her out calls, belittling her involvement, and downright questioning her participation in the classroom.
Until she started solving advanced logarithms in her head without need of a calculator.
We later found out she was taking classes like anatomy and chemistry along with our humble elementary algebra class.
And, strangely enough, this woman did not make a large uproar or ruckus for this gift she managed to learn. In fact, plenty still laugh off her knowledge and their lack of knowledge in that subject.
It's all in a community college: people consumed with their lives-- unintentional bitches trying to get ahead, wishy-washy geniuses dodging the bullets of adulthood, mobster administrators and the plethora of masterful, mindful teachers. 32 people attend this math class and all 32 of them see different things in it.
It sometimes feels like a good TV show.
And here I am, engrossed and fascinating and beginning to understand ideas outside of my own, really, for the first time.
And like my friends always seem to prove to me in our conversations, people and relationships are fragmented and imperfect; they are real and powerful. They mirror the bonds between atoms which make everything we know exists.
Today, I feel like I've grown.
With Love
Nikola Strange
Nikola Strange
