Alex sat in the front of the class, listening to the old man ramble on about information she had already obtained years before. The man must have been in his early fifties by the look of his graying hair and deep wrinkles. His teeth were stained yellow from the gallons of coffee he had admitted to drinking in the past. He had gone off topic so many times that she had lost count. She tried taking notes, but her attention span couldn’t take the long and boring lectures about anything and everything, except the subject the class was assigned to study. Finally, he wrote a problem on the glossy white board in front of the class.
“About time,” she seethed in such a low whisper that only the two girls next to her could hear. She knew the two had been thinking the same thing by their light giggles.
She copied the insignificant algebraic equation onto an empty piece of lined paper with confidence in her mathematic skills. After analyzing the problem, she became uncertain of how to answer. She took her time in studying the equation before following the order of operations.
Mr. Mills selected a male student from the back of the room to write the problem on the board and solve it in front of the class. She was slightly confused of his answer, but she became irritated when she realized she had missed a parenthesis, which had resulted in the wrong answer. She hated that it only took one small mistake (such as a forgetting to add the negative sign or forgetting a parenthesis) for her answer to be wrong. When it came to math, she hated being wrong. She knew the subject so well and it was one of her favorites. She never had to struggle as much as the rest of the students in her previous classes, which fed her pride.
After explaining the most common mistakes that his students had made, Mr. Mills called for a twenty-minute break to separate the four long hours of class. She was thankful to be able to stretch her legs, even for such a short time. She eagerly stood and grabbed her purse, which her mom had constructed as a gift and she briskly walked to the student center to the vending machines where her beloved chocolate mint espresso awaited her return.
