Exeter’s Varsity Mathletes, the undisputedly most popular group on campus, had plans to invite a representative from Texas Instruments to address the school at All School Meeting last Wednesday. Because of a characteristic lack of communication (because, let’s Eddy Ot ’13, Student Director of Mathletics, had hoped to see the newest edition of the TI-89 show up on Exeter grounds, but he certainly got more than he bargained for when southern ex-convict Clifford Harris Jr., a.k.a T.I. rolled up in a lime-green Lamborghini with suicide doors. Confused beyond belief, Ot and the other Mathletes wondered what kind of overhaul Texas Instruments was currently undergoing in their calculator department, and politely asked T.I. if he would be able to teach Exeter students how to graph the integral of e^x. T.I., unaware of what a calculator was, simply asked Ot to “bring em out” and that he would give them “whatever you like.” With numerous Exeter students looking on, puzzled as to why his boxers were visible, T.I. took to the stage, screaming “yeah you know they call me T.I., but you don’t know me.” After a few more performances depicting scenes born straight from the nightmares of the Exeter freshman T.I. began to get to the point and began promoting his chart-topping album, “Paper Trail.” “We did in fact enjoy this part of the presentation. Tying mathematics to economics is such a fascinating cross-curricular application,” said Ot. However, the assembly ended abruptly before T.I. could give his anticipated calculator lecture, when he suddenly announced he was going to “get loose” with his homie Nelly. Before departing, he distributed the T.I. signature product, toothpicks, to every Exeter student, and told them to be “ready for whatever.” Students, shocked, accepted the signed merchandise, completely unsure as to what had just happened and why math suddenly seemed so… cool (is that the correct usage of “cool”?). Ot was not as floored by T.I.’s performance, however. “We were really hoping to learn how to program ‘World of Warcraft’ into our calculators, but this just didn’t deliver,” Ot said. T.I., on the other hand, feels an unexpected urgency to return to campus to further inspire students to “swing ya rag” and be a “stand up guy.” In a statement released to the Academy, T.I.’s publicist said that “the artist will return to the dire situation that is Phillips Exeter Academy as soon as he settles his pending arrest warrants. T.I. feels very strongly that Exeter students need a valuable lesson in multiplying and that they need to understand that the number 58,008 is the only number one should ever even think of typing into a calculator.”
