Classes have only been cancelled for a few days, but hundreds of SFU students have already emailed complaints to the school about possible COVID-19 exposure caused by math assignments.
“It’s like, every single equation, the X-variable refuses to isolate itself,” says Donny Madden, second year engineering. “They all expect me to isolate them. Yeah, um, not falling for that one.”
Like Madden, many STEM students have been reluctant to interact with their homework, and professors have been reluctant to assign it. “The selfishness is unreal,” says Misty Marter, a physics major in her third year: “Forget infection, how dare my assignments not complete themselves in these troubling times? Disrespectful.”
In the meantime, practicing “solution distancing” has quickly become the new normal. However, these measures might not stand up to these variables’ effervescent social lives, according to PHIL 105 student Crystal Thibault — who urges STEM majors to remember that other people have to do math too.
“Just last week, I read in my textbook that Ben and Abby were planning to go out for dinner with friends. I needed to work out the statistics on how likely her peanut allergy was to kick in,” said Thibault. “And all I could think was, Abby, Ben, get back in the house, you brainless social climbers. Your Saturday night crew will still be around, shallow, and codependent eight months from now, I promise.”
No variables from any of SFU’s latest mathematics and computing science quizzes were available for comment — which should alarm you, considering that 90% of the country is supposed to be soft-quarantined and left with literally nothing to do but watch their email inboxes.
