when will i EVER use this?

Choosing the most annoying question high schoolers ask is a tough call. Because honestly I think it would drive anyone insane to realize they have so much responsibility over other people’s bladders, I am asked up to 10 times an hour if someone can go to the bathroom. I mean I control when 76 people urinate, that is power.

Urination aside, the most frustrating question students ask is, “When will I ever use this?” (or some variation of that idea).

When will you use it? When will you use it? I don’t know,  when do you think it might be important to know what the government can and can’t do? One of my favorite math teachers had a student ask her last week when would he ever need to use parallel lines. She answered him (with a straight face), “When you are painting the white lines in parking lots. ” He didn’t understand, in fact his buddy had to draw him a diagram before he could laugh at the joke.

However, questions relating to specific content aren’t actually the most irritating. The most irritating question came last week as my students were complaining about the fact that I required them to read the whole paragraph in order to figure out the context of the vocab terms. One student asked, “When, if I am not going to college and don’t get an office job, when will I EVER need to read a WHOLE paragraph?” I was flabbergasted. A whole paragraph? When won’t you need to read a whole paragraph? If nothing else you will need to read your eviction notice when you are kicked out for breaking parts of the lease that you didn’t read.  I guess whole paragraphs are just one more causality from the whole 6,473 texts per month situation.