Educational experiences unlike any other

Jump back in time with me for just a sec.

It's 1998 and all my friends are doing it. It's the cool thing. They love hanging out doing this stuff and I'm just like, eh I dunno if it's really my thing. I'm a smart kid, I think, but this is kind of out there even for me.

Academic Decathlon. It's basically the most awesome form of nerdery to go down for high school kids if you don't have a chess or glee club.

Oh, you don't know what AcaDec is? Let me enlighten you. It's several months of studying subjects outside the regular school curriculum. Eventually, through the course of studying, a few schools in the state get together in one location and take multiple exams - Regional Competition. Then from those winning schools a handful from the entire state get together for a weekend and nerd it up for two days - State Competition.

The second day starts at the asscrack of dawn with (at least for us New Yorkers) the math exam. Yeah, calculus at 8:45 a.m.

Admit it right now, you'd die if you had to do math that early these days. I hardly remember my name at that time of the morning let alone can do whatever the hell math I learned in high school. My husband is a robot, so we won't include him in this story because he does math for fun. Weirdo.