Fuck cancer, anyway.
Feb. 20th, 2016 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelMy high school math teacher (and one of my favorite teachers ever) has passed away.
The fuck-cancer aspect of this is milder than sometimes; at 88 (87?) this is not as unfair-feeling as some deaths, though on the other hand 88 feels a lot younger now than 68 did when I was twenty years younger and in high school.
I was lucky enough to have her for not one but two classes. I can't remember what I had her for first -- not geometry because that was clueless mysogynist guy; not trig because I did that as summer study so I could do calculus my junior year rather than senior; maybe precalc if that's a thing? -- but whatever it was, an announcement in that class led me to PROMYS, the summer number theory camp I went to. She was also in charge of administering the CaMeLs (California mathematics league, aka optional extracurricular math that I found fun because did I mention I was a math geek omg.
And then there was calculus, which was where I truly adored her. It was faster paced calculus -- AP Calculus BC, for those of you that know the difference between BC and AB -- and there was a parallel slower (AB) track scheduled for the same time that more than half the class dropped back to. But I thrived.
She was not an easy teacher but a good one, and fair, not arbitrary or tyrannical. She was also fiercely in favor of girls engaging in math. And did I mention I adored her?
This death does not hit me as hard as some; I didn't maintain much of a relationship with her besides saying hi at concerts. But after twenty years I still remember her name, which says something, and she still remembered mine, which says another thing.
She lived her life well, and made quite an impact, and she will be missed.
I also do think that she would have loved tonight's concert -- classical music, Schumann and Mozart and tschaikovsky, played well and enjoyably.
*raises glass of wine to her memory*
The fuck-cancer aspect of this is milder than sometimes; at 88 (87?) this is not as unfair-feeling as some deaths, though on the other hand 88 feels a lot younger now than 68 did when I was twenty years younger and in high school.
I was lucky enough to have her for not one but two classes. I can't remember what I had her for first -- not geometry because that was clueless mysogynist guy; not trig because I did that as summer study so I could do calculus my junior year rather than senior; maybe precalc if that's a thing? -- but whatever it was, an announcement in that class led me to PROMYS, the summer number theory camp I went to. She was also in charge of administering the CaMeLs (California mathematics league, aka optional extracurricular math that I found fun because did I mention I was a math geek omg.
And then there was calculus, which was where I truly adored her. It was faster paced calculus -- AP Calculus BC, for those of you that know the difference between BC and AB -- and there was a parallel slower (AB) track scheduled for the same time that more than half the class dropped back to. But I thrived.
She was not an easy teacher but a good one, and fair, not arbitrary or tyrannical. She was also fiercely in favor of girls engaging in math. And did I mention I adored her?
This death does not hit me as hard as some; I didn't maintain much of a relationship with her besides saying hi at concerts. But after twenty years I still remember her name, which says something, and she still remembered mine, which says another thing.
She lived her life well, and made quite an impact, and she will be missed.
I also do think that she would have loved tonight's concert -- classical music, Schumann and Mozart and tschaikovsky, played well and enjoyably.
*raises glass of wine to her memory*
no subject
Date: 2016-02-21 06:57 am (UTC)I haven't a clue if other teachers of mine were still there 20 years ago. then again, 20 years ago my youngest sibling graduated from Davis High, so who knows: we might have run across each other and not known it.