Electronic Math Blows

I hate working with people. I'm either too focused and what we're supposed to be doing that a lot of my small talk is stilted and awkward, or I'm with people I can actually relate to, in which case nothing gets done. I like working by myself because I can focus on the work I'm doing while still making fun out of it. There are simply things I don't want to do by myself, though (you know when a teacher tells you that you can work in a group or alone? I opt for group work because it's the same assignment either way, and doing it by yourself is usually not the way to do it).

So perhaps, working with a machine might work for me, I thought, as my pre-calculus teacher explained that we'd be doing homework, quizzes, and tests, through a computer that came free with our insanely expensive textbook. It guides you through the problems, has multiple variations of each problem, and there's no waiting to hand in anything, and you're graded automatically. You can't even "fail" a problem, either; a problem is "incomplete" until you get every part of it right. What's not to love?

I don't love its utter lack of usability. Because it's a computer, there's no search-and-destroy problem solving. What I mean by "search-and-destroy" problem solving is that moment when you ask someone where you went wrong on a problem, they look at it for a couple of seconds, and then point to something on your paper and say, "here. You didn't add this number to both sides."

Instead, if you can't figure out what the hell you did wrong, you have to go through the problem step-by-step in a patronizing display of how to do most of something you already know how to do, then revealing, incidentally, what it is you did wrong. Not to mention that it's often something like using mixed numbers instead of improper fractions in the answer field. So much of my experience felt like I was playing a guessing game with formatting, long after I found the answer out.

And when I did legitimately do something wrong, hell if I know why I did it. The correct answer is this. Your answer was this. Figure out why you're an idiot. I may hate working with other people, but at least some things get done faster that way.

Did I mention that book I don't use that came with this stupid software was way too expensive?