Black and White

Today as I was Dad's transcriptionist for the business I saw an X-ray that looked like its owner had inhaled a ton of smoke. The report was "Stable Fibrosis" since I figured I actually saw this one I pointed at the smoke and asked him if that was the fibrosis.

"Nope." He said, "That's the hilum. The hilum is always busy."

Later, he read one X-ray as "Pleural disease." Since I knew where pleural thickening always happened and I didn't see anything, I asked him where it was. He pointed to a little white stripe in the area. I'd say whatever it was, it couldn't be that bad. It was puny.

Later, he read "Biapical scarring." Now I was absolutely sure that "Biapical" was the top of both lungs, but they both looked perfectly healthy. I asked him again where the abnormality was. He pointed at two little stripes that were immediately next to the collar bone.

Dad said the key to reading X-rays is to know which areas are supposed to be black and which ones are supposed to be white. I don't get it.

Ending Soon

It seems like I just began this job and it is already winding down to an end. Next week there are two labs and a final. Then it is over. What a serious bummer! In a scant seven days I will be unemployed again. I suppose I'll revive my deceased workout program (It died after twenty-six days.) or I'll check out some more books at the library since I've been doing that a lot recently. What to do...

The Extra Digit

Today in lab I had one guy come up to me with his paper and I knew that he had a problem. You can always tell on their faces when they are angry/disgusted.

"Hey, I know that NaOH is a strong base, but the number it is returning according to her chart (I assume he's referring to Dr. Potts. He seems to be pretty bitter ever since she kicked him out of lab for coming 11 minutes late.) this value would show me that it was a weak base."

I assume that he's had it up to here with not getting the required results on his lab report and I can sympathize. Dad once told me that the best thing to do was work backwards: figure out the theoretical answer first and make up "real-life" measurements to match. (When I told two girls that acetic acid was a weak acid not a strong acid and couldn't have a value of 4963, they made up a value: 1234. How obvious was that?)

So I looked at it prepared to tell him that the Verniers were new so we weren't sure they all worked and sometimes the beakers had residue, blah blah blah, etc. However I was shocked to see his value was approximately 24000. He had been reading it as 2400 since the break-off point was 2500 and he naturally assumed that all the values would be within 50 of the break-off point. In reality all the strong acids have five digits and the weak acids have four. Pretty obvious. Anyway I pointed this out and was satisfied to see all his rage against the machine was away. He didn't have any more questions after that. Hooray for learning experiences!

Overtime

I've always had a basic grasp on the theory of working overtime, but I suppose the closest I've ever gotten to experiencing it was this morning. Today the Chemistry students in my lab were taking a test so I wasn't needed for teaching. Therefore they had me do an organizational bit in one of the storerooms. I had gone in meaning to ask whether I would be working for one hour or two, but my question was answered right away when Mr. Narramore told Luke and me that we were welcome to work until twelve: three and a half hours in all. I punched out at 11:30. Working overtime wasn't as fun as I thought it would be.

Math Review

Woo hoo! First day at my new job! Hop all around! Hooray! I'm going back tomorrow at 8:00 as well. Goody.

Today we did math review. It was amazing how many people could not convert units. It was stunning. You would think a question that said: "A car travels 10 miles. The car travels 5 miles per gallon. How many gallons does it use?" Would be pretty easy. Alas, no. I had to set up question 7 about lightning strikes for just about every team in the room. If you hear the thunder in 3.5 seconds and sound travels at 1074 feet per second, how many miles away is the lightning strike? No one could grasp that the speed was just another conversion factor. They all went nuts.

Oh yeah, there was one girl who asked me how many inches was in a foot. I responded: "Well, the question assumes that you know that there are 12 inches in a foot." I wonder if she was foreign... but if that were the case she wouldn't have had so much trouble converting centimeters to meters...

Back To School

Does anybody besides me have any problem with the first day of school being on a Wednesday? Being a rather compulsive person, I have this nagging buzz in my brain that says that this is not the way it should be. It has manifested in several ways including, but not limited to: Forgetting that today was Wednesday and thinking it was Monday, panicking and thinking that I've missed the first day of class, and wondering whether UTC Chemistry Labs policy is to skip the first Monday or to skip the first Week. This last one is a problem because I'm sure that if I don't show up to the Chemistry Labs on the right days, I'll be fired if I haven't already been fired and assuming that they hired me in the first place. (I'm not even sure that I have the job and I'm already worried about losing it.)

Not only that but I've only had two classes and I already have a load of homework: I have to find a scientific journal that uses academic language at a level that I can understand, create an index card outlining my writing strengths and weaknesses, and translate two pages of Latin. (I'll be done with all of this in about thirty minutes of actual work, but it never hurts to gripe!)

Hmmmm

The math lab people have still not contacted me about this new job. I have no idea what it entails and I'm hoping they'd be willing to let me disappear for the month of June. It's weird because the new semester began last week. I'd think they would have something for me to do, some meeting to attend, some student to teach, etc. There's zip. Nothing. Well, if they never contact me, it won't matter that I leave for a month. I can't lose a job I'm not doing, now can I?

Irritations

I might as well break it to you that I won't have any more free time than I do now. I'll still be running my job as a transcriptionist for my dad and I might have a job at UTC as a math tutor. These two things are however nothing in comparison to my mother's new scheme: "Oh this and that."

Important proverb: Always beware mothers bearing ambiguity. The two jobs I currently carry will each take me a set amount of time which would then allow me to go home and rest for all the time that I'm not working. My mother now says that I will be working "at least one hour" around the house every day this summer except for Sundays. This is a big problem because she will not tell you what she needs you to do until the second before she wants you to do it.

If she would only tell me in advance what she wants me to do, I wouldn't be in human vegetable mode when she asks me to do it. But no. She will keep springing irritating little irritations that are each only about a second long on me all day long. "Duncan, move this. Duncan, move that. Duncan, help Luke. Duncan, wipe off this counter. Duncan, get Emily milk. Duncan, distract Emily. Duncan, find out why Connor is crying. Duncan, fix this. Duncan, I told you five minutes ago to move this. Duncan, would you please wipe off this counter. Duncan, go get the laundry pile. Duncan, feed the kids. Duncan, put Emily back in bed. Duncan, feel this counter. It doesn't feel like you did a very good job. Don't just stand there." I will have no time to rest. Mom will ask me that evening why I am so exhausted, after all I wasn't doing anything today.

That was a lot easier than I thought it would be

Today, I finished a biology final and had some time on my hands so I waltzed on over to room 205 in the EMCS and promptly filled out an application. I asked if I had to come back for an interview but the woman, who was clearly the head honcho, just gazed at me for a while and said "No. I'll call you if I need you."

I'm starting to suspect that it was too easy. They probably looked at my application and realized I was a complete incompetent when they saw that I put the word "Homeschool" down where it says "High School:". Or maybe they were tipped off when I had to call home to get my social security number.

When it asked for "Previous tutoring experience, formal and informal," I put "Teaching elementary school children Latin." Ha ha. How I love ambiguity. It's oh so iffy!

By the way, when it says "Put your last two classes down here:" They don't mean your last two math classes. They mean the two classes you took most recently, whether it be English, Science, Math, or whatever. They probably want to get the dirt on you from your teachers. Ha. Good luck with that. My teachers love me. I'm the best.