I’ve been done for ten minutes
I don’t see why they give us an hour for thirty minutes of work
We’re all done now
Well, not all of us
Three rows behind me I can hear the frantic scribbling of a pen
So either he’s still writing
Or he’s angrily scratching out all the blank space on the last page
Seems odd, but we all cope with boredom differently
Half of the students are staring at the wall
Most of them have blank expressions
They might be sleeping with their eyes open
A few of them, my closest friends
Seem to be mouthing a song
Judgjng by our anxious conversations this morning
They seem to be measuring the time in reps of All Too Well (10 Minute Version)[Taylor’s Verison][From The Vault]
I see a kid behind them tattooing his arm with a pen with black or dark blue ink
There’s a kid in the corner crying
He must’ve been caught off guard by a DBQ about Haiti in a European history exam
All the girls with long hair, including me, are braiding sections of their hair
It doesn’t look good, but at least it occupies our hands
As for me
The blank pages at the end of my open response question booklet are no longer blank
They’re littered with intricate doodles of whatever my eye lands on
Filling the space around the drawings are song lyrics and poems
I wish I could take this home with me
It looks really cool

Finally the timer beeps
They collect our sealed tests and threaten us about disclosing details of our test
Finally they dismiss us
Twenty-three ravenous students trample each other racing towards the lunch room
And as soon as we sit down, we begin talking about the test