So, I guess now I have to talk about that rivalry I mentioned last chapter don't I. Well, I'll tell you right now this story is alot more, pretencious, then the last.
It starts during a nice afternoon in the gym of my school, during the time that the after school program had aloted for what they called "Free Play" my town is really good at naming things I know! I happen to see that some idiot fourth grader (I'm now in fifth grade) has taken my normal homework doing spot in the corner. I confront him, my friends coming along just to see what happens and it goes a little something like this:
"Get out of my spot you idiot!"
"My name is Liam and its not your spot."
"That's the spot where I do my homework, though you probably wouldn't understand any of it." At this point in my life I was very elitist when it came to intelligence. My brain was my one source of reliable pride and I flaunted it. I was the smart girl in my friend group, I helped them with their homework, and sometimes they would say that I must have cracked my head open as a kid and a calculator fell in. Which to this day I think it is a distinct possibility. So you must imagine all the stubborn pride and arrogance.
"Actually I'm probably smarter than you."
"No your not!" He was in fourth grade there was no way he was smarter than me.
"Oh really then if your so smart whats a million times a million?" My friends all looked at me and I said,
"I don't know a billion, does that really matter? So you can talk big numbers."
"Okay then what's seven cubed."
"What?"
"What is seven to the third power?"
"Oh that's easy. Twenty one."
"Wrong, I told you I was smarter."
Confused and frustrated I went home that night and had a session with my behaviorist, Jamie.
"Jamie what does 'to the third power' mean?" Jaime was caught off guard. She'd been my behaviorist since I was five and at this point she'd known me for five years so we were more friends then anything but it was a pretty random question.
"I don't know, why do you ask." Looking back it's obvious that she did in fact know what it was but we did a Google.
The next day I went into After school care armed with my new limited knowledge of exponents and my head held high. Liam was on a swing on the Lower Playground and I walked down there as confidently as one can walk down a steep hill and proclaimed,
"Three hundred forty three."
"What?" He looked vaguely annoyed, like this wasn't worth his time. This only served to insult me and I said,
"Seven to the third power, it's three hundred forty three."
"Oh, okay, well good for you." His response ruined my enthusiasm, I had pictured this being a lot more triumphant in my head.
"So you admit I'm smarter than you!"
"No, you googled something it isn't that hard, if you were smart you'd know it off the top of your head, like whats the date of John F Kennedy's assassination?" I had no idea of course but instead of going home and looking it up I went home and continued to learn about exponents because for some reason I found them fascinating. I wrote out little sheets of the equations but I didn't know how to write an exponent so i just wrote "to the power of" each time. It wasted a lot of paper and eventually one of my teachers noticed and showed me how to do it more efficiently.
So in short I was able to learn exponent in 5th grade through the sheer will of pride and stubborn determination.
Pride and stubborn determination is actually how I learn most things. Except that I'm wrong, because that clearly isn't ever the case. As you can see I am clearly the smartest person in the world.
Just kidding, I stopped believing I was actually beating a counselor at checkers a long time ago. I always won, which is so unbelievable that even in fifth grade I knew that they were letting me win.
Thankfully I didn't have this issue with my mom. She never lets anyone win.
But that's A story for a different time. That's all for now.
Love Ya,
Lissa