Just Pay Attention

Now kids, school and math and stuff may seem boring and you might get away for years thinking that all you need to remember is cut 'n' paste and staying inside the lines when colouring, but one day you'll realise that there are some things that iPhone doesn't have an app for and you'll wish you paid more attention in class.

However, I do agree that school maths tend to use examples that don't relate to your daily life, such as "if train A is hurtling towards train B and A is going at 60 km/hr and B is going at 175 km/hr, how long before they meet at point C?"  The correct answer of course is "who gives a crap as long as someone gets the crash on YouTube?"

So here are some real life examples to practise.

1. Measuring Stuff

When piece of wood A is 104 centimetres long and piece of wood B is an awkward 97.37 centimetres long because you didn't plan ahead and you want to put piece B so that it's centered on piece A, and the overall dimensions of your poorly-thought-out design are about 2 metres long but you can't reach high enough to measure it accurately on the wobbly ladder you got cheap at the hardware and one of the dogs has wandered off with the short bit of wood you scribbled your measurements on, how many beers do you need to drink before the hastily-nailed-together shambles looks sort of okay through squinting eyes?

2. Long Division

At around age 25, your brain will have completely forgotten how to do long division, which is nature's way of protecting the few working synapses you have left after the debaucheries of university life. But one day you could be in the outback where it is too hot for the calculator function on the iPhone to work, and you'll be standing there wondering how many litres of diesel you need to carry in emergency jerry cans driving at an average of sixty kilometres an hour over a distance of whatever it was between Meekatharra and whatsisname Station I think it was 520 or maybe 250, I should have printed out the map. To get the answer, find a very small bit of cardboard backing off a stray fuse packet and draw some stick shapes sort of like a gallows and put one of the numbers inside it and one of the other numbers outside on the side or maybe the top? then throw it away and go down to the pub and ask one of the local blokes how much he usually carries.

3.  Angles and Degrees

Your imagination is only limited by the degree of your overconfidence, and at some point you will want to get all fancy with your bits of wood from the tip and make stuff that has mitred corners and looks good instead of just being whacked together with liquid nails and badly covered up with too much timber putty to hide the mistakes. For this type of project, you will need a tabletop mitre saw, a plastic right angle thing, one of the pens you can never find when you need it, and a power extension lead longer than the one you have which doesn't quite reach. Sketch your concept out on a bit of wood, give it to the dog, then use the tabletop saw bench to put the bag of chook pellets out of reach of the cat, and go to Bunnings and just buy some cheap pine thing from China, because any angles you try to cut will just come out looking like bad experimental sculpture remnants and it will all be the wrong size anyway.

I hope these real life examples will stand you in good stead for the demands of adult life. Next week we'll cover more advanced projects, such as how to build a shed by burning the evidence of your initial attempts and asking someone else to do it, making a chook roost for your cat, and how to glibly convince professionals that the embarrassing home plumbing project was the fault of the previous owner, not you.