When Pedram got his Ph D., I would often call him Doctor, and then giggle for 10 minutes.  Sometimes I would introduce him as Dr. Pedram, and then burst into a fit of laughter.

But now Pedram is teaching a course at McGill, and the current joke is to refer to him as Professor, which just tickles me in every way possible.

The professor/doctor comes home from his class often frustrated by the mentality of current day-students.  “They are all unable to think for themselves!” he exclaims!  “They go to the internet for answers to simple questions.  They make simple mathematical calculation mistakes.”  Taking in account the generational gap between my husband and undergraduate students, as well as the cultural differences in education between Europe and North America, I thought I would give my two cents.  Cause I am both young and hip, and understand the educational systems between the continents.  Plus, the name of the class is “modeling” and I once watch Project Runway Marathon for an entire weekend and cut my bangs to look like Heidi Klum.

“Well”, Pedram states, “I asked the group about how much water is used by the city of Montreal each day.  The goal is to try to use your brain to come up with a target answer, but without or as little use of the internet as possible.”

My first thought is to go check wikipedia.  There must a person who already did this, and time is money, and I ain’t got time to re-invent the wheel.  But without my cheating tool at my fingertips, I have no idea where to go.  P encourages me to start by trying to mentally guesstimate how much water I use every time I flush the toilet.

One time, while I was studying in Senegal, we had an unexpected drought in my neighborhood, and it lasted much longer than I had anticipated.  My roommate and I would stare longingly at the fully flushing toilet at the University, and thought it would be a great idea to take some of the toilet water back home for a quick shower.  It was something like 10 cups.  Don’t judge me, I was definitely cleaner after that “shower”.  Ironically, the water came back that same night.

“10 cups!” I reply confidently.  “How do you know that?” Pedram asks.  I choose not to share my story.  He does not give me any points for my efforts.  I can see why he is annoyed.  His students have also not shared their methods of finding their answers.

“Gimme another one,”  I demand.  He asks me how many pairs of shoes can be made from one cow.  Although my leather collection of shoes is plenty, I do not have any experiences with cows from which I can pull from.  I have absolutely no idea.

He give me a hint.  “Start by thinking of the cow as a sphere.”  This hint confuses me, giving me endless bizarre images of cows in a barrel, or cows in the shape of a football.  We eventually start discussing the circumference of this spherical cow, and my lack of trigonometry skills frustrates him even more.  This type of modeling is definitely not for me.

So now I empathize with the students in his class, for having answers at their fingertips with google, but not being able to use them.  And for having to think of answers for such bizarre questions.  Although it would be cool to be one of those people who could calculate the number of dentists in the city of Montreal using nothing but long division as a tool, I am pretty sure that I would not perform well under the Professor.  (giggle giggle)