As of today, I’ve had a grand total of two math classes so far out of the 29 I’ll be taking this semester (OH YES, I HAVE A COUNTDOWN GOING) and I already have a list of things to tell you about.

No, really. I wrote things in the margins of my class notes so I wouldn’t forget to tell you:

1. My professor is hilarious, even if he doesn’t always mean to be. He’s been teaching at the university for quite awhile now, but you wouldn’t know it from how passionate he still is about math. On the first day of class, he asked us to raise our hands if we don’t like math. My hand was first in the air, which he happened to notice –

“You there, in the back? Your arm shot up so fast that I thought it might have been knocked out of its socket!”

I’m sorry, sir, it’s just an involuntary reaction when someone asks about not liking math.

2. My professor likes video games, but just the old school ones — none of this new junk that the kids are playing these days. So, he was playing one of his old school video games one day and got to the final level and kept winning it. He decided to keep going as long as he could and played that one level 65 times without stopping. He told us his score, and I tried to write it down for you, but I didn’t know how many zeros went with the number he said because — AND THIS JUST IN — I am not good at math. But I was totally impressed because the only video game I can play is Dr. Mario and if that isn’t old school, well, I don’t know what is.

3. Speaking of Dr. Mario, have I ever told y’all about playing that game with an ex-boyfriend of mine? He found out I loved it, so he bought it so I could play it on his Wii when I’d come over to his place. I was totally obsessed with it and we spent many nights sitting beside each other on the couch playing a video game from the early nineties (though, um, this was a relationship that took place just last year). One night he asked me if I liked playing Dr. Mario more than being around him and I had to take a few seconds to really think through my answer. Sign #7,298 that relationship was coming to a quick end.

4. Back to math: the fact that I have a double name has helped my professor learn it rather quickly — i.e. before anyone else’s name. This could be good or bad, I suppose. Good if he needs to remember which name to put a grade of “A” beside; bad if he needs to call on someone to solve a problem.

5. Speaking of problems, he informed us yesterday that he doesn’t like to call our homework, um, homework. He prefers to call it “playing with exercises” because the word “playing” makes it sound like fun. That’s a direct quote from the margins of my notes on exponents and radicals, two words commonly associated with “fun,” right?

6. Another direct quote: “Our first class was about going over the syllabus. In today’s class, I’m going to mess with some minds.” He then proceeded to write an equation on the board that looked a little something like this:

n+8=9-15(789)x938439089402859034825940258234905

Okay, I just typed a bunch of numbers for that last part. But you get my point.

I’m happy to report that he is well on his way towards meeting his objective of messing with our minds.

Well, at least with the mind of the double-name girl sitting in the back of the room.