And it goes on and on in Terminale A (Literature these days), you're playing with pellets in the hair of the curly-haired buddy who's being a jerk because he's just realized that the Baccalauréat comes at the end of this year and he's going to try to get it for the second time, so...
You're flirting, but the pretty chicks are good at maths or play the diligent students too, because they too want their Baccalauréat. So do you, except you're not worried a bit that you're going to get it, and to top it all off, events will prove you right. The mathematical year is thus spent, in a comfortable corner of the room, watching extraterrestrials waving at the blackboard while you discover that La Nausée is really nauseating and that Les Faux Monnayeurs is really boring. Ah well, Sartre and Gide were in previous class, in the final year it's more Plato (the Banquet in the Cave of the Republic and all that), Descartes (“Cogito ergo sum” etc.) and Kant (“To live well, let's live bourgeois-style”).
Is it the ambient stress, the insistent maternal pressure, the May sun? Anyway, a vague hint of pusillanimous willpower pushes you up the arse and urges you to make up for the seven years you've lost in maths within the space of a month. Where you realize that MB Syndrom is still very much with you, active and lightning fast. You convince yourself that you've got nothing to worry about, that you'll get your exam and that this attempt was just a last gasp of academic conformity, a last chance for mathematics to shine its powerful light on your mind. But you didn't really believe in it, and the tiny candle, immediately spotted and extinguished with a simple blink of the eyelids, wasn't going to put you back on the right track, that straight fucking line that's just a figment of the imagination.
Here's another terrible thing: a straight line doesn't exist, it's imaginary, a concept. Well, the blackboard is a rectangle, isn't it? So “straight lines” apply to the door too, the building too, your notebook too. Yes... but no! Because when you get closer, well, there aren't any straight lines, just pathetic attempts to put the concept of a straight line into practice.
Okay, got it! So nobody cares? Of course not! Because thanks to this thing that doesn't exist, this thing we're clumsily trying to put into practice, you're copying the crap written on the blackboard in your notebook, which itself hangs in a decrepit classroom. Or you pretend to be reading a book in the Jardin du Luxembourg, itself full of rectangles, circles and perspectives. But no one tells you that. Nobody bothers to give you any examples of applied maths or geometry. All you know is that “math is useful for lots of things, it has lots of applications!” Which ones? “Well, plenty: cars, planes, rockets!”. Ah ok... You don't really see the relation, but ok.
And frankly, to all the maths teachers who might be reading this, I've heard the phrase “planes, rockets etc.” at least two dozen times in my school years, and I'm going to do myself a favor... To all those who have ever uttered this phrase, I have only one word to say, “Stupid”! Couldn't you give us a real-life example? I don't know, calculating an orbit (Apollo), a landing angle (Concorde), the captain's age (Haddock)? We wouldn't have understood, is that it? But more than all that, we would have needed examples that touched us, “from” or “applicable to” our daily lives, and this... None!
Baccalaureate
D-day arrives, I miss the written exam by one or two points, I'm allowed to take the oral make-up exam, in which math was, at the time. You walk into the room and you're met by “the-female-math-teacher-you've- always-dreamed-of”: hot, young, smiling, kind, in front of whom you want to do anything but fail.
There's something on the blackboard, and you've no idea what it is. She looks at you, smiles to encourage you. You jump in, mumble a couple of absurdities, draw a couple of chalk lines, she laughs... Ouch! Not good... You start gesticulating a bit like those guys who used to wiggle their arses instead of stuffing the pinball machine (sorry, kids), to look like you're getting on with the math thing and... The more it goes on, the deeper you get, and the deeper you get, the more she laughs... Not good, not good...
Lost for lost, you suddenly decide to play it free style: you laugh too (you've got nothing to lose anyway...) and say whatever vaguely mathematical thing comes into your head. You get to the end of “you don't even know what”, thanks to the kind help of Mathbeauty and, as she had a good laugh, she gives you a 5 out of 20! Maaaan!!!! The best mark I've had since the start of the 4th grade !!! You just want to give her a big kiss (you already wanted to before, but now even more!) because, for you who painstakingly achieved an average of 0.5/20 in maths over your entire senior year, it's beyond all expectations!
