Not a terrible surprise

Several nights ago I was bored and remembering high school. In particular I remembered enjoying my early years of math, where I could play around with formulas and take pleasure in applying my mind to problem solving. For amusement, I decided to search for some grade 10 algebra problems on the web and attempted to complete a few.

I'm not at all surprised to admit that I couldn't do them. Some of them I couldn't even solve after I looked at this hints. There's your laugh on me for the day. (FYI, for my friends who read this and think I'm an idiot - please be informed that I did take all the higher level math courses and passed them all in high school.)

Now for an even more amusing admission! I was at one of the university libraries yesterday and was seated next to a bunch of exam archives. Out of curiousity I picked up a random set of archives (from 1982) and flipped to the English exam schedule.

In this case, I AM surprised to admit that if I had to take the English syntax/grammar exams, I would totally fail. Why? I couldn't understand the bloody questions! What the hell do they mean by "Deduce the following sentences?!" I realized that because I couldn't understand the questions, I would have failed at least half the exam.

In one series of questions, you had to correct one or all parts of the paragraph. I couldn't find ANY problems with them. (Of course, the question did specify that the paragraph may already be correct.) Before dying of laughter, I gave up on trying to find errors.

I'm pleased to report that I would have passed the contemporary english usage exam though. :)