One thing that
really grids my gears is holding my gears against a grinding wheel.
One thing that metaphorically grinds my gears is when people say "That's just your opinion" or "Well let's see you do better and then you can complain." Neither of these have any bearing on whether someone's point is valid or not. A critic should't have to be able to repeat an activity to judge whether that activity was done well, since presumably they know what a well done activity already looks like. I mean seriously, how many Olympic judges can run as fast, skate as well, or dive as deep as the people they're judging? Probably none of them. A well supported opinion backed up with verifiable observational or numerical data is also quite different from someone just making something up. Just because it's also an opinion that someone holds does not mean it is also impossible for that opinion to be right or wrong. All opinions are opinions, but not all opinions are equal. Or if you love stupid cliches, opinions are like starfishs, they stink and everyone has one, with the exception of the people who regularly bathe, and I guess it's even theoretically possible for it to smell good if they've got cologne all over their ass.
Homework. 40 geometry problems a night is not necessary, 10-20 sounds more appropriate.
Lots of homework does suck but everything they teach you in math now, no matter how obscure or useless it appears, will come back to haunt you. Showing that a triangle is a triangle might seem boring now but you will see it again in vectors, Newtonian physics, and vector calculus among other things. You will even see it in accounting and business because all of their formulas are derived from calculus. Those are really applications of calculus though, so your instructor will probably just tell you to use this formula and not tell you where it came from, and you'll be using geometric concepts and not even know it.
