There is one thing I like about tests. There's no reason to bring your book to class. You won't risk having your phone on, even on vibrate, so you don't need to bring that either. Your notebook can stay at home, your backpack is unnecessary; you walk to class bare-backed and strangely, uncomfortably free.
When it comes time, it's just you and a pencil. You sit down and are handed the challenge to show, after every extra weight and attachment has been stripped away, what's still left.
And then you realize that you still have three more classes to go to that day, and you forgot your backpack, and you can't call your roommate to bring it to you because your phone is back in your room. You can't use another phone because who memorizes phone numbers nowadays anyway? So you're left with two options. The first is to return to your room to get your things, arriving late to class. As you enter the lecture hall, every eye turns to you, filling you with shame at your transgression. The second, arriving to class entirely unprepared. Without any way to take notes, you're forced to turn your full attention to the lecture. Your mind begins to wander. "What's the point?" You ask yourself, as the professor drones on about a long dead poet. You become disenchanted with the educational system, and begin failing classes. Unable to secure or hold a job, you continue on a downward spiral, taking residence under an overpass, eating cereal out of an old boot. You die alone, and your funeral is attended solely by a dozen cats. Instead of burying you, the cats eat you, making you the refreshment at your own wake.
ReplyDeleteI really need more productive things to do with my break.
Love that you wrote something about this! I was thinking about it just the other day, how many unnecessary things we carry to class. How good it feels to have nothing on your back.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me want to live simply in other areas of life. :)
Your metaphor for retention was splendid.