Today, I was babysitting, and a little girl asked for help with her homework. I cheerfully began an explanation, only to freeze mid-sentence. I could not for the life of me remember how to do long-division. I'm about to graduate from Cornell University, and her little brother had to correct me. FML
Collection
Halloween
A failed costume, stolen candy and a very real scare: Halloween, the one night when fear is allowed.
Today, I was helping my kid with homework after work. I tried to Google “third grade long division explained simply.” Autocomplete filled in “because I don’t understand it either,” which I read out loud without thinking. My kid stared at me and said, “So… who’s teaching who?” FML
Today, one of my students corrected the problem I had solved on the board, explaining that you do multiplication before subtraction. I teach the second grade. FML
Today, I was trying to finish an English assignment and I was not sure how to complete it, so I emailed my teacher to ask her for help. She told me to… flip over the assignment handout page for instructions. FML
Today, the kids I teach informed me that I had spelled my name incorrectly on the board. I looked at it and assured them that I had spelled it correctly. I'm 22 and a graduate student, they're six and mentally challenged. Guess who was right? FML
Today, after I lectured my family at Christmas dinner about how schools are indoctrination centers, I'm now helping my kid with homework every night and realizing I don’t understand half of it. FML
Today, I learned, 90 horrifying minutes into a college exam, that my 85-year-old calculus teacher had spent the last three weeks teaching us the wrong chapter. FML
Today, I was teaching a class when a student pointed out that I'd used the wrong "your/you're" while writing on the board. FML
Today, I was writing my rough draft of an essay, and I forgot how to spell a word. I waited for auto correct to help. I was writing on paper. FML
Today, I was called to solve a problem question at the start of a lecture. I stupidly went up to the board before telling the lecturer in front of 300+ students that I had no Idea what he had been doing the whole week. The lecturer made a sneery comment about why some of us are blockheads. FML
Today, we were taking a bio quiz and I understood the subject, so the people sitting behind me asked me to help them out. Being a kind fellow classmate, I did. When the teacher got suspicious, she asked the class, "How are all of you getting the same answers?" everyone pointed directly at me. FML
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Top comments
TehGinga94 21
Nobody above middle school can remember. You're not alone.
SApprentice 34
It's hard to remember information when you have had no reason to review it for years. Don't feel bad, OP. It happens to all of us.
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Comments (100)
marxistbkly 3
No one expects kids from Cornell to do long division.
hookumsnivy 6
Proof that our education system sucks. Put down the calculators! Kids are too dependent upon a calculator because they're always allowed to use them. Learn how to do it correctly and you can do basic math in your head when you don't have a calculator handy. When I took the GREs they didn't allow you to use a calculator at all. Not even a basic one.
WelcomeToAndale 13
Don't worry OP, even the smartest people forget the simplest things sometimes! And if you've had no reason to do it for years, there's no reason why you would remember it. You're only human!
skyeyez9 25
Everybody has brain farts from time to time. After high school, most students use the scientific calculators to do math. So you forget initially the simple things.
sneeze_watch 19
It's alright, my husband can't write in cursive. He has a service job, so he never really has call to. It's just easier to print on bills so a customer can't mistake your handwriting. If you don't use something often enough, you tend to forget it.
doodlecloud 27
Don't worry - it's relational understanding that's important, not instrumental. If you can still work it out your own way then it shouldn't matter if you can't remember the way you were taught in school. That's a lot better than simply remembering techniques but not understanding why they work or how to adapt them.
rise182punkz 8
We all have brain farts
srhornb 4
No big deal. That's what calculators and Excel is for. No one does long division after elementary school anyway. Funny story though
doctorhook86 25
Andy Bernard, is that you? (^Character from the office)
done_dreaming 4
I feel your pain. Start my 4th and final calc class for my engineering degree in 7 days. 16 y/o nephew asks for help with his algebra 2 homework. I got nothing... what the hell is algebra??