Tiny Marks, Big Problems
This tiny dot ends a sentence before it keeps talking forever like it just discovered caffeine and emotional damage.
What is a period?
This word is what happens when “breakfast” and “lunch” get shoved into the same meal because time is fake and cereal can’t save you now.
What is brunch?
This is what you call numbers less than zero — the basement goblins of the number line, living below ground and emotionally thriving in winter.
What are negative integers?
This is the good news that Jesus died for sinners and rose again, which is a much better message than “try harder, panic more, and hope God is impressed.”
What is the gospel?
This is what you should bring to class if you enjoy participating in learning instead of staring at your desk like a Victorian ghost with no supplies.
What is a pencil?
This part of speech names people, places, things, and ideas, because apparently “that thingy over there” is not considered advanced academic vocabulary.
What is a noun?
This word combines “smoke” and “fog,” creating the kind of air that makes a city look like it forgot to shower.
What is smog?
This compares two quantities, like saying, “For every 3 students doing the work, there are 2 students aggressively sharpening a pencil for no reason.”
What is a ratio?
This word means being forgiven and accepted by God, not because you spiritually aced the test, but because of what Christ has done.
What is justification?
This is what you call it when your brain briefly leaves your body, visits another dimension, and returns with absolutely no memory of the instructions.
What is zoning out?
This happens when two full sentences are glued together with nothing but confidence, poor choices, and the energy of a shopping cart with one broken wheel.
What is a run-on sentence?
This word combines “motor” and “hotel,” because apparently someone looked at a parking lot and said, “Yes, but make it sleepy.”
What is motel?
This means “out of 100,” which is helpful because saying “37 out of 100 tiny math goblins agree” takes too long.
What is a percent?
This is God’s undeserved kindness, also known as “you did not earn this, please stop acting like your spiritual résumé is carrying the team.”
What is grace?
This is the ancient classroom art of raising your hand instead of launching your thought into the room like a verbal grenade.
What is participating respectfully?
This punctuation mark shows up before a list like it is dramatically opening the gates to a kingdom of mildly organized information.
What is a colon?
This word combines “web” and “log,” because the internet needed a place for people to publish their thoughts before everyone moved on to yelling in comment sections.
What is blog?
This is the mysterious letter in an equation that stands there pretending to be unknown, like it just walked into class without a pencil or a plan.
What is a variable?
This is trusting in Jesus rather than trusting in your own goodness, which is great because your own goodness has the structural integrity of wet cardboard.
What is faith?
This is what happens when someone says, “I didn’t know we had to do that,” even though the instructions were spoken, written, repeated, acted out, and spiritually projected onto the wall.
What is not listening?
This is a sentence that arrived at school missing a subject, a verb, or its entire reason for existing.
What is a sentence fragment?
This word combines “emotion” and “icon,” because sometimes typing actual feelings is too much work, so we send a tiny digital face to do emotional labour for us.
What is emoticon?
This kind of graph makes a straight line and shows a relationship where things change at a constant rate, unlike student energy levels after lunch, which are scientifically unchartable.
What is a linear relation?
This is the process by which the Holy Spirit makes believers more like Christ over time, even though some people appear to be progressing at the speed of a confused turtle.
What is sanctification?
This is the powerful life skill of realizing that “I’m done” does not mean your work is good, complete, correct, readable, or safe for human eyes.
What is checking your work?