Worst case scenario

Since Christopher is repeating a year at school, he and Patrick are in the same year, but mercifully not in the same class. However, they do have the same math teacher. They each have a math test this week, so obviously they are studying the same material.

Christopher is surprisingly, almost uncharacteristically not bad at math. It is not a coincidence that math is one of the subjects he managed to pass last year. He is not particularly interested in or enthusiastic about math, but he has always been able to quickly and pragmatically grasp the concepts, and since he is "filling in the gaps" this year, he has more to start with.

Patrick, on the other hand, is a math teacher's worst nightmare. He takes delight in math and can develop tremendous enthusiasm when some mathematical concept takes his fancy. However, he is not necessarily always on the same page (or sometimes even the same planet) as the rest of his class and what the teacher thinks they are supposed to be learning.

Theoretically they should ideally complement one another and be able to study for the test this week together.

In fact, worse has now come to worst, and I find myself living in a household where people have loud and vehement and extensive arguments about asymptotes and the square root of x.

I don't know how we are going to survive three years of this, but since I don't even know what they're talking about, at least I don't feel called on to attempt to mediate. The square root of x is definitely no concern of mine.