Killing Them With Science

         My senior year high school had two science classes available for me to take – microbiology and AP chemistry. Mrs. Morgan was my microbiology teacher. I remember the class was big – but I do not recall anything else. So sad considering micro was my favorite biology subject in college!

            I was excited about chemistry class because if I scored high enough on the final exam, my college might exempt me from inorganic chemistry freshman year! My teacher was the same one I had for regents chemistry in 10^th grade, Mrs. Gilmore. And it was here we discovered that the first chemistry class we took our sophomore year was just the smooth easily traversed surface of an incredibly huge subject. Just digging a smidgen below that surface revealed a whole new intricate, complicated world! The class was challenging, but I managed to stay on top of the material, for the most part, and ultimately I was able to leap right into the sophomore organic chemistry course my freshman year of college.

           What got a tad convoluted for me besides the material in the chemistry textbook was my schedule. Since I wanted to take two science classes and Spanish 2 (there was no Latin 4) – my whole day was filled and there was no room for a study hall. This was good for me because as I've said before, I really did not like study halls. But it was not good for AP chemistry. The class had a lab that met once a week – we were required to take study hall when we registered for the AP chemistry. I disobeyed the rules and asked the powers that be to put my gym class where everyone else in AP chemistry was taking study hall – and once a week I could get out of gym to do the chemistry lab – I knew this was doable because that was how we did the labs for the other science classes like biology, regents chemistry, and physics.

           The powers that be were concerned about this decision because that would mean putting me in a gym class with sophomore girls. Wouldn't I be uncomfortable in gym with girls I did not know and who were younger than I was? I told them gym class was uncomfortable no matter who was in the class with me, and anything was better than a study hall. Mrs. Gilmore was the only one who was still concerned when the school year started.

           Well everything went fine for most of the year. Gym class was about as weird as predicted – yeah the girls were all new, and I was certainly the odd person in the group, and felt it – but really, it was just like any other gym class with the exact same feeling of oddity. I was able to get out of gym once a week to go to chemistry lab – and that was great.

The one and only glitch came when Mrs. Gilmore wanted to have a study session so we could study as a group for the final exam. She asked the class to come to her classroom instead of study hall one day when it was not lab day. Then she looked at me and said I could ask the gym teacher if that would be okay for me to miss one more gym day that week.

           Well, my gym teacher said absolutely not!

           What should I do? Mrs. Gilmore might be upset that I missed the study group and be upset also that I did not register for the class the way I was supposed to in the first place – in conjunction with a study hall. I thought about not going to gym class anyway. But attendance would be taken, and then my name would go to the office for skipping class. And my parents would be called and told that I had skipped a class, and they would worry wondering where I was – especially since I had never done anything like that before. I would not be able to communicate to them that I was okay, just studying for a chemistry exam. So I would be in trouble long before they would hear the explanation and by then they would not want to hear it. Remember way back before I started kindergarten, my parents said I was to never get in trouble at school and if I did, they would not bother to hear my side of the story?

            Ultimately, I went to my gym class when everyone else in AP chemistry had a group study session.

It was not until probably I was out of college when I happened to mention to my Folks one night about the one class in high school I almost skipped. I was being glib, but then they asked me for the details. I told them and gave my reasoning for why I had wanted to just not show up for gym that one day, and then explained quite meticulously how I got to the final choice to stay out of trouble and not skip class.

            Dad looked at me as if he could not believe his ears. “What kind of trouble did you think you would be in if you skipped a gym class to study for a chemistry exam?”

I think this was one of those times when he came right out and said I had no common sense at all!

           Sure, it seems obvious now!

           The unknowns of the microscopic world can be scary; scratching the surface of the world of chemistry can be daunting; but crossing a phys ed teacher? That's the kind of stuff nightmares are made of!

293 20151020 Killing them with Science