Survival Of The Fittest

Peter yawned. He couldn't help it, Mr. Kwong never failed to be short of slow or boring in his classes. He was going over the homework that was assigned the previous week. Homework that Peter, as was the precedent, had not done. It wasn't his fault that Mr. Kwong had decided to do the grading entirely based on quiz and test scores. Quizzes and tests which were just as easy as every other one he'd taken before in high school. How could they even call this course "Advanced Placement"?
Because everyone else around you is an idiot.
"Mr. Siu, if you feel that you cannot get enough oxygen by staring out the window, you can try walking up to the board to show the class how to do question two." Mr. Kwong's voice sounded resigned. He probably already knew what would happen now.

Peter shrugged, then flipped open his binder for a few seconds until he found the slightly crumpled problem set he had unceremoniously shoved in there the week before. He stood up from his desk, located in the back corner right by the windows, and walked up to the board. "Are you sure you want me to solve it up here? My writing can be pretty illegible." Peter had to make an effort to keep his voice steady. He hated having to come up in front of the class to solve questions. He wasn't exactly one of those people that could go up in front of groups and give lectures.
Because you don't have any balls without your booze.
Mr. Kwong just grunted and passed the whiteboard marker over to Peter. A green whiteboard marker, still quite fresh from the box. Peter glanced down at the question and then began writing out the question on the board:

'A coffeepot has the shape of cylinder with radius 5 inches, as shown in the figure above. Let h be the depth of coffee in the pot, where h is a function of time, t, measured in seconds. The volume V of coffee in the pot is changing at the rate of -5*pi*h cubic inches per second. Solve the differential equation given that h = 17 when t = 0.'
Stop stalling and start answering the goddamn question. And who the fuck cares about coffee.
dV/dt = -5*pi*h

dh/dt = -h/5

int(dh/h) = -int(dt)/5
This is a worthless step.
ln h = -t/5 + C

h = e^(C-(t/5))
He really wished he could've skipped showing that step. He's smart, but not that smart.
And you care that much because...
h = e^C * e^(-t/5)

17 = Ae^(0)

17 = A
The seconds ticked away. How long had he already spent doing this?
Long enough, retard. Everyone's waiting for you to fail.
h = 17e^(-t/5)

Peter put the green whiteboard marker onto the tray. He started to walk back toward his desk, but realized he forgot something. He turned back to the teacher, "Oh, sorry Mr. Kwong. Did you want me to explain to the class how to solve the question for you too?" The teacher just waved his hand dismissively, so Peter went back to his desk and sat down as he usually did: on the back of his chair. He heard the teacher start explaining the solution to the problem he had just done, but Peter had gotten used to droning out boring teachers.
A beer would be nice right about now.

(OOC: Permission granted to have Melissa in two threads at once so that Peter is not a lonely man. Also I owe Solo a differential problem.)

Melissa unconsciously tapped her mechanical pencil against her desk as she watched their math teacher drone endlessly on about mathematical formulae. She thought getting an afternoon math class would be perfect. It was right after lunch so she would be full and alert after a healthy meal and be in tip-top shape for learning. Unfortunately, real life never went that way. She had to be saddled with a boring teacher and had recently discovered that being in a stuffy classroom with the afternoon sun shining on you was a great sleep aid.

She never did fall asleep, of course, but she was sorely tempted to. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Peter Siu walking up to the whiteboard to solve one of the ever so interesting differential equations that Mr. Kwong had written on the board. Her mind drifted. She had done the problem last night after her parents made her review. No point in her looking at it again.

So she let her mind drift to other subjects while pretending to keep her full attention onto the work being written down. She couldn't help but wonder about that fiasco in the library though. Were that many students bored enough to just wander into the library during their lunch hour? Who knew? Well, it had been fun, although finding out she'd need to charge her iPod was a little annoying.

She focused back onto the problem on the board, glad to see that Peter was almost done with the question. As she watched, he marked down the answer to the problem and headed back to his desk, pausing only to ask if he should explain how you were supposed to arrive at the solution. Unfortunately for her ears, Mr. Kwong said it was fine and began explaining it himself. She sighed softly and began taking notes. It didn't matter whether or not she already knew all of this material. Her parents wanted to make sure she wasn't wasting valuable time learning.

Lazily scribbling down the methods that Peter used to solve the problem, she finally finished when she heard her own name being called by the teacher. 'Oh dammit, is he just calling on all the smart people to do his work for him?'

"Yes, what is it, Mr. Kwong?" She said in her sweet voice, standing.

"Would you please solve number 3?"

"Of course." She smiled and walked up to the board where another differential problem awaited her. She recognized the problem instantly. It was kind of hard to forget when you did thirty others like it. She began scrawling out the solution on the board in a confident manner.

"You think that you're the only one that supports our daughter?! How dare you say that I don't care about this family?!"

She flinched, her head whipping around and her eyes flashing briefly with fear. The class stared right back at her and she shook her head. She heard a cough from her side and turned towards the teacher. "Sorry...I thought I heard something. A-Anyway..."

Flushing with embarrassment, she quickly finished off the rest of the problem before retreating to her seat. She sighed inwardly and resolved to begin eating lunch again. 'Hallucinations. Just what I need.'

(OOC: Sorry for how this originally was if you read it, I was literally falling alseep as I typed)
Derek was in the middle row, looking more at the rather poor drawing he was working on instead of his textbook. He'd glance up at the teacher occasionally and then go back to 'taking notes,' as he put it, the fierce dragons with offset proportions filling the time before he could get out of this class and soon enough into the library for the class he didn't have, a time to read the current story his mind was affixed apon. He quickly retrieved another sheet of blank paper from his large backpack, the overflowing blue menace astrewn with loose, torn, and old doodles and thoughts from days gone by.

The dark green pen, the end chewed nearly to a point and stubbed with the taletell signs of his bad habits, was now being used as sort of an impromptu comb between tring to ink out parts of his drawing. Although Derek's desk space was filled with different objects he arranged just before each clase, it also was very organized and concise. Each article told a different story, from the dog-eared fantasy series neatly stacked in the corner or the unopened biography of Abraham Lincoln another teacher had passed out wihout apparently considering the advantages of Google.

As Derek finished up the end of the drawing he found himself absentmindedly rubbing and picking at the loose grains of acne he had: a compulsion he's been trying to stop for years. Again turning away from his desk with the new sheet of paper he wrote a quick 'hi' and passed it to his friend Eric, sitting nearby,

Try as he might, Eric just couldn't concentrate. He had told his dad that this class was too advanced for him at the beginning of the year, but no, he just had to insist that it would be good for his college credits... Would he even need to take math classes if he majored in animation? Whatever the case, Eric had decided animation was more important anyway, and had spent most of the class drawing half-formed manga-esque doodles in the margins of his notes, taking a few moments every now and then to copy down a problem or formula. Sure, it made the notes even more incoherent, but god knew he needed something to pass the time.

Fortunately, doodling wasn't the only thing he had to keep himself from being bored to tears. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Derek toss a note onto the floor next to him. Smiling to himself, Eric quickly dove down and snatched it up while Mr. Kwong's back was turned. Whether or not this class was too advanced for him, the fact that his best friend was in it with him made it all the more bearable - at the very least, they could suffer together, if not try to help each other out with homework.

As discreetly as he could, Eric unfolded the note and scribbled a reply before tossing the note back.

'Are you taking notes? I got lost as soon as Peter started writing'

Peter prided himself on his skill of information gathering. He watched in his peripheral vision as Derek Atul doodled aimlessly, then stopped to scribble something on a sheet of paper he passed over to Eric Cooper. Peter was never one for passing notes; he preferred subtle signals or hushed whispers. Peter sighed and let his gaze wander around the room and out the winidows.

He heard, rather than saw, Melissa Li stand up and walk toward the whiteboard to demonstrate the next problem. He turned his attention to the board (there really wasn't anything interesting happening elsewhere). Why is it that girls can write so neatly on a whiteboard? Peter scowled, noting again in his head how crude his writing looked compared to hers. And then it happened, without any warning. Melissa spun around, like someone had just called out a mistake in her work. She's quite pretty, Peter noted to himself. Then again, he thought that about almost everyone he met.
Because you're a hopeless, sex-craved pervert. Go ahead, add her to the list of fantasies to jerk-off to.
There was something about her expression and her posture as she spun around that, just somehow, seemed off. Some emotion flashed in her eyes, but Peter was never good at reading people's eyes. Still she looked defensive, maybe even afraid. Stop, Peter mentally slapped at his forehead, I don't have to always act the knight in shining armor for people.
You'll never get a girl that way anyway. It just leads to friend-zoning.
Melissa mumbled a shaky apology, and then recovered her composure to finish the question on the board. She seemed to be in quite the rush to return to her seat. Peter yawned again. No, I don't need to talk to her to find out what that was about. She has her own life and wouldn't want me meddling. It's a hard concept to accept. Peter couldn't just leave a frightened girl to fend for herself.
But you're totally fine acting like that so you can get a guy. Nice job, Mr. Hypcorite.
Mr. Kwong then decided to start the most fun (or most aggravating, depending on the day) part of the class: classwork. The teacher wrote out a question on the board. It wasn't too challenging, but at least as hard as the ones from the homework. "15 minutes, class. You may work together, or ask me any questions. Or Mr. Siu too I suppose, since he'll be more than free enough to not be practicing his skills."
At least he's figured that out. Guess he's not a total moron.
The class erupted in a cacophany of chatter. Peter quickly scrawled out some intermediate steps and found the answer to the question. No point trying to help people if he didn't know what the hell was needed to solve the problem.
Or you could be a genius and know it by doing it all in my head. Oh right, you're not.
Peter scanned the room. Most of the class had banded together in pairs or trios, working together to get an answer. They'd call him if they needed his help anyway. He lazily wandered over to one of the solitary working figures. Unsurprisingly, the first one he got to was none other than Melissa.
Tiime to put on the moves, Sir Knight.
"I don't think you'd actually need help, but I may as well offer." Peter said, crouching down at the side of her desk. "Anything bugging you? Not necessarily school related. Anything's fair game."
Very smooth. Idiot.

Melissa sighed as she sat at her desk, mulling over her sudden hallucination of her mom's voice. She knew what caused it. Her mom had said that last night when she was working on math homework. Her parents thought it would be a great idea to argue right outside her room. Surely family conflict would be an amazing motivator for doing well in school. Admittedly, it did work...in a way.

She shook herself out of these moody thoughts and turned her attention back to the teacher, who was beginning to write out the problem they would be working on for the next fifteen minutes of class. It was difficult, yes, but she knew it like the back of her hand. A couple of minutes after the group activity had started, she had finished writing down the steps and the answer to the problem. She wondered if she should go help out with any of the other groups. Or maybe she should just wait to get asked.

The choice was made for her when Peter walked up, kneeling next to her desk. She recognized him from the school band and she worked a small smile on her face. He seemed like a kind enough person, but she didn't know much about him beyond that. Still, when he offered to help her not only with schoolwork (not that she needed help with schoolwork), but with other problems, she could have hugged him.

She didn't, of course. She was tempted to, but she didn't. She was also quite tempted to tell him everything about her home life. To lift the burden from her shoulders...or at least lighten it a bit. Just a couple of words or a couple of explanations and that's all she would need to say. She wouldn't have to pretend that everything was all right with her and she could share her worries and fears with someone else.

"No, not really. I skipped lunch so I guess I'm a little hungry and tired, huh?" She grinned back at Peter. She could have told him everything, but she wasn't about to tell someone she barely knew outside of classes something that important. And besides, it would be too easy and what would it change? Her parents weren't doing anything wrong, really. The only real outcome would be scarring her reputation forever and in this world, appearances are everything.

'Sorry Peter. Maybe later.' Melissa placed her pencil down and got out of her desk. "So perhaps we should go help out the other groups?"

Derek had just finished reading the note and started in on his reply when Mr. Kwong announced the classwork. He quickly moved his desk to Eric's, reluctantly moving his drawing aside for a bit of paper to work on the problem. Derek looked up at the problem now. "What... that's basically gibberish to me." He looked over at Eric with wide eyes, "How are we going to pass this class?" A fae's luck, is what I need.

Derek quickly hefted up his bag into his lap, scouting through it for the only thing not on his dsk that he needed most: his math book. It has to be in here somewhere. As his searching became more quickened, a grueling journey for his grail. Finally he found it, nestled under a cheesy fiction story Derek had started to write, but gave up on when his favorite author had wrote her next book. With a smile he pulled it out, only to have the backpack fall to the floor and have papers scatter like a village under a Norse raid.

Derek sighed and threw his head up, a frustrated growl briefly escaping. He set the heavy math textbook on his desk and bent down, doing his best to grab each paper from the floor. "We really need to get into an easier class," Derek murmured.

The giant was running through the hallway.

Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God... Kwong will surely kill me for this...

For Rob Jenkins, oversleeping after a hard day was something completely normal. But sleeping till lunch time? Ouch! This will be far more complicated than saying just a few excuses. Especially, because Mr. Kwong didn't like Rob any single bit. Rob had absolutely no talent for Maths, and Kwong knew it. Rob couldn't get away from feeling, that if not Melissa's help, Kwong would have gladly dumped him for another year.

Finally, Rob reached the classroom doors. Before he opened them, he took a while for taking breath. He was exhausted. Maybe he had an endurance to run for almost 40 minutes on the court, but running all the way from home to school was a bit more hardcore thing to do. Plus he didn't sleep very well lately. Maybe he was training too much and too hard?

...

Nah!

Alright. Everything will be fine. And one, and two and...

He opened the door

"Good... Afternoon, Mr. Kwong. Sorry for being so late. I overslept again. I don't know how that happened!"

"Well, well, well... Mr. Jenkins... You slept well?"

"Well, not exactly sir. Lately-"

"I wasn't expecting any answer from you, Mr. Jenkins. Nor do I expect any of your excuses. Just sit down, and go to work. I will talk with the principal about your behavior-"

"I already talked with principal about this... He said-"

"And would you be so kind, and stop interrupting me? The fact, that you are a..."

It looked like Kwong wanted to vomit.

"star of some basketball team, and the principal likes you, doesn't mean I'm going to treat you better than any other student..."

That little bastard... I'm not like that! I'm not some fucking ballerina, you jerkass! And how dare you intone 'basketball' like that? Like math is really so fucking important...

Rob (barely) calmed down

"Honestly sir. I don't expect it. I don't-"

"Enough, Mr. Jenkins. We lost enough time already. Please sit down. The classwork awaits you."

"*sigh* Yes sir."

Rob looked at the whiteboard.

Oh crap! How am I supposed to solve this thing?

Rob looked around the classroom. Then, he sighed again. This time it was a sigh of relief. Work in groups. He was saved. And if he's lucky enough... Yes! There she was!

"Hey Melissa!"

"Quiet please, Mr. Jenkins"

Rob only nodded to the Math teacher, and went in Melissa's direction. This time he was whispering.

"Hey Melissa... Long time, no see. How's it going?"

What a weird dream that was. Really pretty... Oh, I dunno. Weird, I guess. But I already said weird, but- no, I didn't say weird. I thought it. Silly me. Or you. Who am I talking to? Err, thinking to? Thinking at? Hrrm. Kinda figured space stations didn't have villagers living in grass huts inside them. Sure were grateful, though. But you knew that. And that talisman... nasty. Glad I managed to...

"15 minutes, class."

In the back of the classroom, Nick Reid broke out of a daze and suppressed a yawn. He was sitting, unmoving, with eyes glazed over but an attentive look on his face. Or at least he was before Mr. Kwong announced classwork. That always managed to bring Nick to. He looked longingly at the clock, then grabbed his binder off the floor and set it on his desk. There was nothing there before- Nick had a hard time caring enough to take notes.

Gee, I'm tired. Guess I should get more sleep. No, screw that. Who needs seven hours? I used to go forever on five.

He unzipped his binder, set aside a massive stack of loose, slightly crumpled papers, and yanked a piece of lined paper out of the rings. Drawing a pencil out of his pocket, he looked dreamily at the equation and jotted it out on his paper.

Why are my integral signs so freaking ugly? I mean, I try to get in some finesse with the curve and whatnot, but it just look likes an S that's been attacked by a lobster.

Squinting at his problem, he put his right hand to his forehead. It looked like he was either suffering a migraine or receiving some alien transmission. He very lightly scribbled a couple numbers with his left hand, grabbed his calculator, and punched a few keys. Shaking his head, he wrote out the answer in a lopsided scrawl and looked at the clock again. Thirteen minutes left. Sigh.

I'm pretty sure I'm not smart at all, everyone else is just freaking stupid.

He stood and stretched.

"That was fun."

Maddy frowned at the board from her seat directly in front of where Peter was sat. She liked her spot, next to the window, generally out of Mr Kwong's peripheral vision, but without the general stigma of the back corner. Staring blankly at the question on the board, Maddy was well aware that this class was too difficult for her, she was not a natural mathematician and it was only because her father, being an accountant, believed that math was the only sensible subject, and Maddy's claims that she just wasn't as bright as her two elder siblings fell on deaf ears.

But the question on the board was floating around her ears. As she turned around to ask Peter, her usual crutch in math, she noticed that he wasn't there. Blinking twice in vague surprise, Maddy looked around the class to try and locate him, spottng him quickly poring over Melissa Li, and she felt a twinge of annoyance. She felt abandoned, sitting in the sunny corner with only a calculator for company, not that the calculator was much good. Sighing, she wrote the question down on her paper, slowly, and laboriously, as though writing it more slowly would make it faster.

The first couple of steps weren't too tricky, she did them, purposely taking up a fair bit of room on the paper so that it looked like she'd done more. Even though Maddy reckoned that she worked harder than anyone else in the class, she still barely managed to hover around the middle in class rankings, and this fact annoyed her. She had never come across a class that she couldn't work at coming near top in, this one was just completely beyond her.

Why am I still in this class? she mused to herself. The fact was that pride was stopping her from dropping it. She tied her hair up with a red elastic, a futile effort as the impractical fringe still flopped into her eye. She needed some grips or something, and began rooting around in her pencilcase for something that might suffice.

As Nick stood up not far from her, Maddy turned and stuck her tongue out at him, in an entirely friendly manner.
"All right, all right," she said in an accomadating fashion. "Just because you're brainy."

"I know," Eric responded to his friend as he shuffled vaguely through his own notes, "But it's probably too late into the year to switch out now. We get into another class, we have to start a totally different curriculum and get used a new teacher, and it could fuck up our schedule and we'd have to change other classes, and we might have to take an F for a semester in this class, and... I don't know."

Frustrated, Eric chewed on the end of his pen a bit as he stared at the problem he'd copied from the board, trying to will it to suddenly solve itself. He couldn't afford to fail this class, dammit! Changing his mind mid-chew, he instead slammed the pen on his desk and slouched back in his chair.

"...I don't know what I'm doing..." he sighed, admitting to no one in particular that the string of numbers and letters had defeated him. What was WRONG with him that this class was owning him so badly? He'd done decently in math before calculus, and this stuff obviously wasn't impossible - it didn't seem to difficult for Peter, anyway.

Meh. Peter. No, it never seemed difficult for him, did it? The teacher even singled him out as the one to help out the other students. Kwong never did hesitate to lord over everyone how much better Peter was doing than most of them. Eric was a bit glad to see that Peter had chosen to help out Melissa - he was far too bitter at this point to ask anybody else's assistance. Screw them. They wanted to prove how superior they were to him, they could suck it, he'd rather just take the poor grade than have someone try to condescend him, he knew he had no idea what he was doing, nobody had to tell it to him, they're all just thinking how stupid I am...

"Bright side, though," Eric told Derek as he drew a Gulpin eating the equation with his heavily-abused pen, "We've only got like ten minutes left. Maybe he'll just let us do it for homework and we won't have to hand it in, now..."

Peter was glad to see Melissa smile back at him. She had a cute smile, and it really fit her face. She brushed off the offer, chalking her slip-up off to a missed lunch. Yeah right, like I expected her to pour out her heart to me right here in the middle of class, Peter chided himself mentally. No point pursuing things anyway. I don't want to look like a stalker or something.

She put down her pencil and stood from her desk. Peter had known she was smart enough to answer the question on her own, but hadn't expected her to finish this one so fast. Maybe the question was easier than he had initially thought. "So perhaps we should go help out the other groups?" she asked. Peter shrugged and got back to his feet. He could take a hint when the conversation was dying. He pointed over to the pair of Eric and Derek and opened his mouth to suggest for her to help-

The classroom door swung open abruptly. The tall and muscular (and maybe cute) star of the basketball team had just apparently woken up from his deep sleep and was now spouting off what sounded like an excuse for his tardiness. In truth, Peter had no idea how a mediocre student like Rob Jenkins had managed to get registered into an AP course. He'd probably worked with some of the higher ups to pull some strings. Of course he also couldn't figure out why a prospective professional ball player would need AP Calculus.
Who said everything had to make sense? You don't make sense half the time.
The chatter had stopped momentarily while Mr. Kwong scolded the exceptionally tardy student. The noise picked up once the matter was settled and Rob had been instructed to do the classwork. He took one look up at the board, then a quick scan of the classroom that quickly zero'd in on Peter and Melissa. "Hey Melissa!" he called out across the room.

Peter had no intention of starting any sort of meaningful conversation with the basketball player. Not when there was work to be done and people to help with their (math) problems. "Have fun with Mr. "I'm Special" Jenkins, Melissa," he whispered before backing away to give her some "quality time" with the jock.

Peter weaved his way over to Eric Cooper and Derek Atul. The two, he knew, were close friends who had both gone in a little over their heads when they registered for this course. They weren't stupid; in fact they had gotten fairly good marks in normal math, but perhaps lacked a bit of the required thinking structure to properly apply the mechanics of calculus.
And there you go again, thinking you're so much better than everyone else.
"How you two holding up with the problem?" Peter asked as he got to their desks. He glanced over at Eric's attempts at solving, scribbled in between large doodles. "Eric, that's not how integrals work. You have to go backwards from a derivative. That's why we call it the ‘anti-derivative'." Peter didn't really like explaining the concepts to people. He always thought it sounded arrogant when he was just trying to be helpful.
You say that like you think you're not arrogant.
Peter turned his head around and made a quick scan of the classroom, just to see if there were others that might also be able to use his help after he was done with the pair. He caught Maddy, looking over and sticking her tongue out at… was that Nick Reid?
Here we go, white knight off to the rescue again.
Peter glared at Nick. Nick Reid wasn't a paragon of normal, decent, or helpful. He was quite a bit self-centered, and would likely give Maddy a hard time about the classwork. Best to keep an eye on them for now.
You just looooove doing that don't you.

Melissa watched Peter leave with a small pang of regret, but quickly brushed it aside as her attention was taken by one (very) late Robert Jenkins. She couldn't help it considering he just got in a...well it wasn't a shouting match but it certainly was an argument, with the teacher. After that, he was almost at her side in an instant, kneeling down at her desk. She sat back down and smiled a little at him. Rob was a nice enough guy and pretty well-meaning. She didn't really care for jocks though and she was almost certain he harbored some feelings towards her, but she never reciprocated those feelings.

"Hey Melissa... Long time, no see. How's it going?"

"Good enough, I guess." She smiled again, getting an empty page in her notebook ready and picking up her pencil once again. He always asked her for help on some of the tougher problems and no doubt this was one of the harder ones that Mr. Kwong had just posted. And she didn't mind helping him. It was just another thing to do and it made him happy, which was good.

"So...shall we start?" She asked absentmindedly as she scribbled down the problem on the empty page. She looked at him with a stern gaze but softened it with a smile. "You know you shouldn't be late for class. Next time you better wake up in time, okay?"

"Ah, a damsel in distress! You call upon my staggering reserves of knowledge?"

Nick said it with self-effacing grin a mile wide, but pondered it all the same. Smoothtalking? He could do that. Play to a crowd? Easy. But he sensed that he must seem a little off in the way he bandied words. It would certainly explain why his conversations tended to be so short. Maybe it didn't help that he didn't hesitate to insinuate himself as the smartest guy in the room. Heck, he'd attempt to match wits with Feynman if he were to crawl out of his grave and stroll through the door. All the same, he seriously doubted if anyone could really take him seriously when he carried himself like a Christmas tree in January and enveloped himself in a jacket that he could fit into twice with room to spare.

She does realize who she's asking for help? Ah well, beats just sitting there. Or standing here. Of course, if I did just sit there, I'd be bored and my life would seem longer.

Bah, I'm bored enough as it is.

He stowed away his binder and walked over to Maddy's desk, pausing for a few seconds to admire Rob's flustered explanation.

Come on, at least get a little creative. If you're gonna be late, you may as well-

...Oh, right. Kwong has no sense of humor. Never mind.

"Heh, I sure hope you know what you're getting yourself into, I-"

Slightly flustered, he darted back to his desk and snatched up his paper, then returned.

"Err, yeah. Having the problem would help. Oh, you've got it written down. And it's on the board too. I guess I meant answer. Brain fart. So, yeah. Here's, ah, here's the answer, which I guess really doesn't help without the busywork under it. But I guess, uh, hey, you know, you've got really nice integral signs. Mine always look like something the cat dragged in. I can never understand how girls can do that sort of thing, I mean I try to get a nice wrist movement, but- Oh, right. Anyways, I'm thinkin' after where you left off..."

((Inside joke? I honestly thought it was common knowledge that any good late story involved being mauled by bears. Anyways, edited.))