Was It Something I Said?

Whenever I tell people that I am studying algebra, they ask, with big astonished eyes, “Why?” “Because it’s required to get a degree in Italian,” I explain. Their eyes get bigger and their jaws drop. “Huh?” is a common response.

The first time I went to college (in the Pleistocene Age), I was not required to take algebra because I had taken it in high school and it wasn’t part of my major. So it isn’t part of those old college credits that are being applied to the general education requirements for my current degree. Now everyone must pass an algebra class no matter what. It’s crazy.

Certainly, algebra has some practical uses. But so do cooking and house painting (and both are probably more relevant to the everyday lives of most people), yet I am not being required to study those subjects.

Algebra is hurting my Italian. It takes so much time to do the homework and study for the tests, and leaves me so tired, that I often find there isn’t enough time and energy left for Italian. I confess that I am not spending as much time studying vocabulary and grammar as I did in past semesters, because that time is no longer available. And I need that time for the weird and complex subjunctive mood. The class I care about is paying for the class that means nothing to me.

Before the algebra teacher handed back the most recent test, she said that the average score was 69, and the median was 75. There are several people to whom she has suggested dropping the class, because they are clearly failing and it’s only going to get harder. Some are stubborn; no one wants to drop, because this class is required for graduation or transfer. I got 93 on the test; the two kids who usually sit near me each got 51.

It’s not surprising that so many people are doing badly. Even though it is necessary to meet a prerequisite to get into the class, many students seem completely lost. Every class session the same questions are asked, usually by the same people. The pattern is something like this. The teacher writes something on the board, such as “3 + 5″. Someone wants to know if it would make a difference if they wrote “5 + 3″. The teacher says it doesn’t matter because it’s really the same thing. Later in the class, another student will again ask a question that follows this same pattern. And next week, someone will ask it again, just as someone asked it last week. People who don’t understand that “3 + 5″ and “5 + 3″ are interchangeable are likely to have a lot of trouble with complicated equations.

Another common problem is not doing doing the homework, or not doing it completely. In every class meeting we learn new material. The homework is there to reinforce and review what we’ve just learned. The answers are in the back of the book, so it’s easy to check our own work and try again if there’s a problem. Yet some people don’t do the homework at all, or do only part of it. Then they wonder why they don’t understand the next section (which builds on previous sections) or why they can’t pass the tests.

And the third big problem is the one that plagues every class I take here: attendance. People just don’t show up. In a difficult fast-paced class like this one, missing even one session will put someone far behind. Absences should be rare, but they are commonplace. No matter what the course, there is never a time (not even on a test day) when everyone is present. Long ago I stopped being surprised by this, but I still don’t understand it.

I don’t really have the right clothes to wear to a funeral. But I have come to realize that it’s something that should be in my closet. I thought I’d have to get older than this for the deaths of people I know to stop seeming unusual, but I was wrong.

Cinema Paradiso: I think I would have enjoyed this movie more had I watched the original release version rather than the director’s cut (both are available on the DVD). The version I saw has 51 minutes of additional material. As a result, the film was just too slow. Whoever shortened it did the right thing. It’s the nostalgic story of a famous Italian filmmaker who returns to his hometown after 30 years. He remembers his childhood and youth, the people who influenced him, and his first love, and wonders if his life would have been better or worse if things had happened differently.

Postcript: Not too long ago I had the chance to see the other (shorter) version of the movie. It is definitely better.