As it happens, I love to feel smart. And nothing makes me feel smarter than correcting a teacher. For me, it doesn’t get to happen often because literary analysis is very subjective, and more often than not, an English teacher will just shut you down and say “no, that’s not what it means at all” rather than tell you you’re right and that never thought if it like that.

Luckily for me, then, is that I get to take other classes besides just English.

I’m taking an Ag class (Agriculture) which is about food sustainability and how we’re going to feed the growing population of the world when the usable farm land is shrinking.

The section we’re on now is just basic biology. The food chain, energy conversion, interactions. As the instructor stood there lecturing, I missed terribly my Marine Biology teacher. He was awesome, and my current instructor is just… bland.

Being that it is an Ag class, we started out on photosynthesis and primary production, when we were shown the chemical equations for both photosynthesis and respiration. Which were wrong.

Here are the chemical equations as taken directly from his presentation:

Photosynthesis:
200709061401

Respiration:
200709061402

Unfortunately, those equations as written are physically impossible. In no way can sunlight turn two Hydrogens into 12, or three Oxygens into eight.

The correct equations, then, are:

Photosynthesis:
6 CO2 + 6 H2O + sunlight → C6H12O6 + 6 O2

Respiration:
C6H12O6 + 6 O2 → energy + 6 CO2 + 6 H2O

I know, I know, this isn’t really at all interesting.

The point, though, is that no one else caught the mistake. Not in my class, not last semester. Even worse, once I let the teacher know it was wrong–and he acknowledged that it was wrong–he gave us almost exactly the same lecture the next class period, and when he went over the equations again, he still had, and taught, them wrong.

So I feel especially smart. I almost hope there’s a question on the test asking us what the correct equation is. Because I’d so totally get it right.

–”Photograph,” Green Album: Weezer