the unexpected scientist

Today in English we had a really interesting discussion about the science of writing. When we first walked in to class, Chia had two things on the board for us to work on. One was to find the molality of a glucose solution. The other was to find the derivative of x^2. In English class. I have often heard of strange things such as this in a class ending up changing people's perspective about a teacher, how they learn, life, the universe, etc. I was excited to see where Chia would go with this. Chia then asked us, if Meaning of The Great Gatsby=X, find X.

Unfortunately, I had to wait until after second lunch to find out why molality and derivates matter. Next we read the story of Goldilocks, complete with enlarged text about the great big bear, middle sized text about the middle sized bear, and small text about the teeny tiny bear. Finally, Chia explained himself, slowly getting us to work through the idea that we used a formula to find the math questions, so we could use formulas to find meanings in books. He started to tell us about the first of these formulas, deconstruction, before the period ended. Deconstruction is the idea of looking at what we accept as fact, such as Goldilocks being a white, young, pretty blonde, and asking, "What if this weren't true?"

I enjoyed the lesson, and even though I knew something strange was coming, I still never really figured out what Chia was going for until the last few minutes of class. It's weird, because I love writing, love English class, love words. On the other hand, math and science aren't my strongest suits or preferences. Because of my previous dissassociation between math and english, I find myself strangely hesitant to embrace the idea of finding out the meaning of a text through using formulas. I would much rather find it through thought and discussion. I guess that I am subconsciously using these formulas, but now that I know/am learning them, I will be conscious of them. It will be difficult for me to apply known science and math into, gasp, English class.

I know that I'll get used to it, but I wonder if it will change my perception of either English or Math class. I guess I'm more of a scientist that I realized.