PLEASE CHECK THIS OUT. Our own Aeronmelon is going through some shit at the moment and could use some help. Check it out here and consider an upvote or a comment to push it into activity. Sorry, not something I do often or will be spamming. But I care about my friend and if I can get a couple more eyes on his situation then I'm going to try to do what I can.
Given enough time and known lengths, most of my students should be able to calculate the surface area of this by the time they graduate. They'd just split everything into triangles and quadrangles, use the formula for each, then add everything together. It's not that useful of an exercise though, didactically speaking, because once you grasp that process, it's just repetitive and lengthy. There'd have to be a LOT of given values to make this solvable, too.
On a more subjective note, they can also form sentences. They just don't want to when colloquial speech brings the point across just as well and it's an informal setting. The same is true for most people of all ages in my experience.