rocky is a genius.

a genius who, miraculously, found a way to contact earth. hi earth! i met an alien!

[therealrylandgrace]

hello earth! a few updates:

- i figured out a way to save the world, it's on its way to you. please don't let it turn into a geopolitical mess.

- i had to figure it out alone, for a while. there's no way to say it that isn't sucky. i was the only surviving member of the hail mary crew.

- the "for a while" part is really cool though. i met an alien! an intelligent alien! his name is rocky. information about him is also on its way.

- we're on our way back to his planet now, 40 eridani a b. i've decided just to call it "erid."

- in the meantime, since rocky figured out how to get the internet, (he's a super-genius. it's pretty awesome.) i want two things:

- 1, let me know how earth's doing.

- 2, ask me science questions. i miss teaching.

[therealrylandgrace]

finally getting around to reading shakespeare now that i have basically unlimited free time. i read romeo and juliet in high school, and macbeth in college, but i honestly never understood what all the fuss was about (sorry to all the english majors out there.)

but boy. i get the fuss now. big old fuss, here.

[therealrylandgrace]

What is froyo? I don't believe I've ever had it

WHAT?! okay. it's like this really soft ice cream stuff. and you go up to the machine, and you pull the lever, and it fills your cup with it, and then you go to a little bar with all kinds of toppings and you eat it with a flimsy plastic spoon. it's great.

[therealrylandgrace]

i really miss froyo right now.

[therealrylandgrace]

hi mr. grace! since you're in space, have you encountered other spacecraft out there? also did you know many people on tumblr have picked up rocky's way of speaking?

hey there! rocky and i haven't come across anything recognizable as a spaceship, but neither of us were really expecting to. heck, neither of us were expecting to find each other in the first place. space is really big. like really big. any other spacefaring societies out there are probably gonna be really far away because of that, if they even exist at all.

i have seen a good few people mimicking rocky's mannerisms on here! i show him sometimes, but he usually just goes on a rant about how they're getting it wrong. i guess there's some intricacies in eridian that i still haven't picked up.

[therealrylandgrace]

My history exam is in. Approximately ten hours. I know that history is not your forte Dr grace but! My maths exam is in approximately fourteen hours. You like maths right

i do like math! a lot! there's a reason no one talked to me in high school.

[therealrylandgrace]

this is a checkpoint to find something else to fidget with that isn't biting your lips or picking at your fingers! sincerely, an anon with a bandaid on each finger bc of said fidgeting D:

oh gosh, cut that out! and don't worry about me, i have a very helpful (very annoying) boulder to yell at me whenever i start picking at my hands.

[therealrylandgrace]

🦊<- it u

i'm really not sure what this means even a little bit.

[therealrylandgrace]

I don't know if you've received this question before, so I'm just going to ask anyway. Apologies if that's the case 😅.

Why do you like teaching so much?

i think i've said before on here that i don't believe in "the meaning of life," in a universal sense. i think we all find our own meanings of life, and that they can change over time. well, mine is teaching.

more specifically than that, i love to learn. i love discovery and curiosity and all those other things we name rovers and satellites after. but there's no point in learning things if you can't share it with other people. science is based around the idea that everything we learn, we learn together. that's why we check each other's work. two heads are better than one, and all that. the academic world can be... a bit hostile, since everyone already thinks they know everything about their subject. i'm not perfect there either, honestly. you get so used to being the expert in a given room and you just stop questioning things as much.

but put yourself in a room where everyone's there to learn? where you can help foster that curiosity in the people around you? well, you get curious again. sometime you get lobbed a question that you don't know the answer to, and you get to look it up and discover it together. more than that, you know you're helping to push more people into becoming scientists, philosophers, writers, artists, who will all check each other's work, and make the world better at what it is they do. it's a pretty great feeling.

i will always answer this question by the way, so feel free to keep asking it. miss you guys.

[therealrylandgrace]

♪ Science man, science man. ♪ Does whatever, science can. ♪ Science man, can he fly? ♪ No he can’t- ♪

wait what do you mean shot into space?!

Science man!! （/＞□＜)/ Nooo!

gosh, i missed you guys.

[therealrylandgrace]

i'm back! i'm not dead! a lot of you have been asking if i'm dead and i'm not! rocky and i had a minor (actually not very minor) hiccup with our engine systems and we had to put our heads down for a bit to make sure we didn't get stranded out here. good news is, we're getting pretty good at doing that.

[therealrylandgrace]

Favorite they might be giants song?

bee of the bird of the moth. although i've really liked particle man recently.

[therealrylandgrace]

as you were a science teacher, I feel compelled to dump what was the most absurd science class I’ve had thus far into your inbox

I took an AP Environmental Science class, which was honestly my first mistake. The exam was so easy I could’ve passed it in middle school, and my teacher exclusively taught through projects. A month before the exam, she disappears from the face of the earth, and all her students have to go off of is another teacher around the corner saying that she left because another class was a bunch of idiots who she couldn’t handle anymore. I feel bad for her about that, honestly.

So, it’s crunch time, and we just started ANOTHER project before exam review, but there’s a long-term sub. The sub has no idea what she’s doing and just tells us to read the instructions on Canvas. Half the class doesn’t do the project because the instructions sucked because they were designed to be supplemental to real human work, who could’ve seen that coming?/sarcasm Then it’s review crunch, which is also absolute buns and two-thirds of it was broken, and then after the exam we get ANOTHER NEW long-term sub for the last four-ish weeks of school. He also knows nothing and just gives out really bad WebQuest packets. This whole thing was a mistake, I should’ve just taken earth science and been bored for a year.

Next year I’m taking astronomy, so I have high hopes since most other students I talk to said it was fun

hooooly crud. that sounds insane. my school didn't have any environmental science classes growing up, but i would have jumped at the chance. probably would've made the same mistake you did.

best of luck in astronomy!

[therealrylandgrace]

How is the food situation? Do you have spices? Are your vitamins pills or infuse in your food/water? Can you grow vegetables in your lab?

Sending much love from Earth. 💕 Tell Rocky we love him for saving our favorite teacher.

gosh, i wish. right now, the food situation is pretty much just "coma sludge mixed with taumoeba." there's some micronutrients in the coma slurry, but not much. hence, my 3 different vitamin deficiencies.

[therealrylandgrace]

you said you had a DS, did you have a 3ds? have you heard of tomodachi life? if not go look it up because they released a new one

i doubt there's a nintendo switch on the hail mary so please figure out how to pirate and emulate it and give it a shot. you've already pirated pretty much everything ever (well, not you, but you're in possession of it) so nobody can get you in trouble. evil activities are worth the whimsy

maybe you can make a mii of rocky as a human!

heck, i've certainly got the time for it. i'll see if i can figure it out. the only video game i've played up here so far is zork.

[therealrylandgrace]

help i'm sick and can't sleep because my nose is leaking. i'd imagine you're having the opposite problem of fatigue but perhaps we can still be sick Together </3

actually, i've got the wonderful combination of fatigue and insomnia, so yeah. right there with you. sick together sounds good.

[therealrylandgrace]

The government named a scholarship program after you! I think it’s there version of an apology? lol

you know what? i'll take it. apology gladly accepted. i want as many of you learning as i possibly can.