TIME TO SHAPE UP...

Well, today was simply a perfect day. Got my facts regarding the velopharyngeal mechanism backward, ended up answering 3 questions on my midterm wrong. For the record, velopharyngeal mechanism is DOWN, not UP, during nasal sounds (m, n). By being down, it allows sound to pass through the nasal cavity, which is kind of the point, since it's a NASAL sound.

When I add those 6 lost points to the other questions I know I got wrong, I conclude that there's no way I scored better than an 88, unless she curves the midterm, which she said she might do. So there's hope. Guess I've got to study harder.

Oh yeah. In another class, I got to put on elastic gloves and examine someone's oral cavity. She showed me hers, then I showed her mine. Noticing my unusually high-arched palate, my partner remarked that she's only seen such palates on mentally-retarded people. I kept asking, "Really? Only mentally-retarded people?" "High-arched palate and mentally-retarded people. That's a correlation you've noticed?" You know, I kept giving her opportunities to say something like, "Oh, but you're obviously not mentally-retarded, so it can't be an absolute rule."

Never was such a disclaimer made. Of course, seeing as how I f*cked up on the velopharyngeal mechanism, maybe she's not so off-base.