“Life” is a problem set, a good-sized packet, spiral-bound with time. Question follows question, annoyingly repetitive, each asking, “How shall I live this day?” So vague, and yet each demanding an answer. Not everyone receives the same packet, though. Some get sheets with the answers in parentheses after the question, which hardly seems fair, but then again, it’s not as fun to solve a problem you already know the answer to. Some don’t get a reference table, and have to scramble to answer the question with whatever they can find in the recesses of their psyche. The formulas don’t always work, anyway. As soon as the work is finished for one, the sheet is taken away; there’s no time to go back and correct.
It’s unclear if this assignment is graded or not, so some just muddle through and fill in the blanks. Some flock to the smartest, the prettiest, or the most popular in the class and copy her answers, but there is no answer sheet, so the fruits of their deception are rotten in the bud. Someone raises his hand into the silence and asks if there’s retakes, but the teacher is absent, or dead, or never existed.
At the end of it all, when pencils are laid down and people start biting their lips, the class joker raises his hand with a smirk and asks, “What was the purpose of that exercise? It seemed pretty pointless to me.” Some turn and look at the student teacher, who claims that the teacher left instructions. Some wrinkle their brow, wracking their brains in the hopes that it wasn’t all for nothing. Some just laugh.
The teacher’s pet rolls her eyes. “It’s not your place to ask,” she says. “There must be some point, or the teacher wouldn’t assign it, now would she?” Everyone averts their eyes.