Exam Day!

Tomorrow is your English oral exam. Yep. Judgement day. This stupid exam is worth 50% of your final grade. And you totally know your stuff for the exam too. Absolutely. Yep. One-Hundred-Percent. The authors you're studying? Yeah, you know all of 'em. George Orwell. Margaret Atwood. Oh yeah. All of the emo peeps. Who else? ...Oh, yeah. Her. [[Emily Dickinson]] [[Emily Dickenson]]

To be honest, knowing how to spell their names is pretty much the best you've got. Other than that, you're pretty clueless... Not just about Dickinson, but also about Orwell and Atwood. Some of the most politically inspired writers ever. Ugh. [[Yeah.]]

See, it's funny because even though your exam is tomorrow, you still don't know her name! You're pretty doomed. [[Yeah.]]

Okay. But honestly, the fact that you didn't study wasn't your fault! I mean, you were //busy//. With other stuff. Like, uh, Like... [[Learning how to dance]]

Yeah! And learning choreography of your new favourite K-pop band, BTS, is the best possible thing to do. After all, your exam is in approximately 12 hours. You have 12 hours to learn Orwell, Atwood, and Dickinson, but you only have the rest of your life to learn BTS' dances. Of course, the smart decision here is to [[Study those boring writers.]] [[Learn those dances.]]

Good choice. You dance and dance and dance, and then decide to go to [[sleep]].

You study and your mind overflows with inescapable boredom. You kneel down on the ground and die a pitiful death unworthy of being written about in any of Orwell's essays.

The next morning, you wake up and make yourself a balanced breakfast. It consists of a single piece of untoasted white bread with some ketchup smeared on. No, your life is not a wreck, thank you very much. The exam is at 1:15. You're leaving the house at 12:15 because if you miss the exam apparently you'll fail the entire course (which is just an utterly crap rule, by the way). You spin around to check the time. It's 9:30. What do you do? [[Dance, dance, dance]] [[Time to study...]]

Good choice! The time passes quickly. Soon enough, 12:15 hits. You're slightly sweaty but it's nothing a little deodorant can't fix - you'll shower when you get home. There's a little bit of anxiety at the back of your mind haunting you and reminding you that you haven't studied at all. But also consider: You literally do not care anymore. So. You grab your car keys, pencil case, wallet, phone, and water bottle. You consider using the bathroom before you go? [[I gotta go.]] [[Nah ->Head out to school]]

You flip open the collection of Orwell's short stories that you should have read a few months ago but didn't. (Again, you were busy... Learning how to figure skate. Very important. Number one priority, of course.) Hmm... Which one do you read? [[A Hanging]] [[Politics and the English Language]] [[Shooting an Elephant]] [[Nope. I can't do this. Time to dance. ->Dance, dance, dance]]

It's a depressing essay about some guy being hanged in Burma or something. You skim it briefly and then set the book of essays on fire and burn to death in the process.

It's a narrative of Orwell's experience as a police officer in Burma. Apparently he had to shoot an elephant. You tire quickly of studying and pray to the elephant gods above to end your misery. An elephant falls out of the sky, crashes through all 3 storeys of your house, and lands on your head, crushing you into human pulp. Unfortunately, you're dead. On the bright side, you don't have to read these essays anymore.

The drive to school is pleasant. You pull up your playlist of BTS songs on your phone and cruise down Hwy 7 to your school. [[This music really makes you want to jam out.]] It's such a pleasant feeling that you pretty much forget you're on your way to your final exam. Ah, well. [[Roll into the parking lot]]

It's a pompous essay about how writers should follow specific rules in order to not be literal dog poop. Here are the rules: i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do. iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active. v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous [[Rules weren't meant to be followed.]]

"Ha!" you exclaim, knowing that you are fully guilty of having broken all of these rules. "You'll never take me alive!" But oh how wrong you were, because Orwell's ghost comes back to life and drags you into the void and you are never seen again.

You park the car, making sure that your student parking permit is visible. Check the time - yep, still golden. You're actually almost 40 minutes early because traffic was surprisingly really good. You head into the school and up the stairs, looking for your exam room. You know it's on the second floor, but other than that, you hope there will be some other people from your class waiting to do their exams as well. [[Head up the stairs]]

Well, you've made it. You're outside of your prep room and there are some others around, just as you'd hoped. Now would be a good chance to [[start studying...]] But instead, you choose to [[review that choreography you learned this morning]]

Oh wait. The only things you brought with you were your car keys, pencil case, wallet, phone, and water bottle. You neglected to bring any of your actual study material because you were too focused on dancing. The other kids around you are feverishly flipping through the pages of their Orwell Essays and their copies of The Handmaid's Tale. Ah well... Guess that means you can't study. Unfortunate. You [[fill up your water bottle]] to pass the time.

You start dancing in the middle of the hallway. You blast your music to full volume. Those in the hallway stare at you, but you don't care. You start breakdancing. The other students cheer you on. The teachers assessing the oral exams come out to see what the commotion is all about. They find you spinning at 60km/hr on your head. They're wowed. 60km/hr is too fast. Your head burns from the friction and you die. At least you had a good show, though.

Ah yes. Sweet, sweet hydration. Since you now have a full water bottle, you can totally go ahead and [[go over your choreography]].

Well, there are other people in the hallway, so you don't do the choreo full out. That would probably be really disruptive. You do all of the basic motions, making sure that your feet generally go where they're supposed to, but you leave out the grandiose arm and hip motions. 40 minutes pass pretty quickly. It's now [[time to prep for your exam.]]

The teacher sits you down at a table. "You have 20 minutes to read this poem by Emily Dickinson and write notes for the analysis that you'll present to your teacher. Your time starts now." [[Read the poem]] [[Ignore the poem]]

This poem is about life and death. Big surprise, the emo poet who locked herself in her room for two freaking years is talking about life and death. You start highlighting stuff and make a few hypotheses on your paper. Who even cares anymore? Screw it. After 20 minutes, your time is up and you have, like, I dunno, a decent analysis written down? Hopefully you can fake your way through it during your oral. [[Walk into your exam room.]]

You choose to ignore the poem. After 20 minutes, you have nothing written down. You arrive in your teacher's classroom. She's got a big fake smile on her face that screams "I totally haven't been listening to kids spout bullcrap at me all day". She tells you to begin your 10 minute analysis. [[This poem is about life and death.]] [[This poem is about your mom.]]

Damn right it is. Aw yeah. Life and death. Not knowing what to say next to back up your analysis, you spontaneously combust. Your teacher starts screaming, but then she remembers that that's one less analysis she has to listen to, so she shrugs her shoulders and sweeps your ashes into a dustpan, eager for her unanticipated 20 minute break.

Your teacher stares at you, amazed. "How did you know that Emily Dickinson wrote about my mother before she was born?" You rise from your desk. Now is your chance to escape having to do this analysis. "I know both all and nothing," you say, trying to sound like a philosopher. But Plato overhears you and rolls in his grave which upsets his favourite student Aristotle and so Aristotle comes back from the dead to drag you to philosopher hell even though you are most definitely not a philosopher, just somebody who decided to make an insensitive joke at their teacher.

Your teacher smiles at you. She tells you that you have 10 minutes to present your analysis of Dickinson's poem, and then the next 10 minutes will be an discussion-based assessment of a prompt from either Atwood's //The Handmaid's Tale// or Orwell's essays. You don't really know what that means, so you just [[begin]].

You begin speaking. [["The poem that I have received today is poem 1100 by Emily Dickinson."]]

[[Through her delicate use of contrast and symbolism in her poem, she tells us that life and death are really two sides of the same coin and are not that different after all.]] Man, this is hilariously boring.

[[The first example of contrast is in stanza 1, where she states that asjdyhfgpuw3bjkefp9oujfbagiu]]

The first 10 minutes went pretty well, you think. It was pretty decent. Most of what you said sounded like KHgaiougfkbiluay972ugbdf? to you, but in all you think that it was passable. You remind yourself again that you have literally stopped caring. Next is the discussion assessment. You're soooo unprepared for this. [["Explain how the use of structure in Atwood's Handmaid's Tale"]]. [[Object to the terrible mistake that is your prompt card.]] Honestly, what does this even mean? This whole situation makes you want to [[make a scene, because you don't care anymore]].

What the hell is this question? It doesn't even make grammatical sense. Oh well. [["Well, I think that the structure in asikduyfy928gubjdwsajkh98 a9w7wi7fawsgdufwgkhje, iaousdgfbk2w hasdiufi32 7iasd6987h uasui ia aiasuidhiauy."]]

8 minutes left. You can't believe you just talked for 2 minutes about Atwood's book. You didn't even read it. Well, you skimmed it lightly at the beginning of the semester. You know, when you actually cared about grades and life and English class. [[Keep talking]]

You move through some more discussion prompts, back and forth between you and your teacher. You can't remember much and you're kind of zoned out, to be honest. You're still thinking about the choreography in the back of your mind. "What do you think of that?" asks your teacher. [["Oh. Uh, sorry, could you repeat that?"]] [[Well, you see...]]

Your teacher's face turns to stone when you point out the mistake. Literally, it turns to stone. You've just petrified your teacher. Congratulations. The police come for you and accuse you of murder even though there's no evidence. You're locked up in jail forever, but at least you get to play Triple Sabotage with your jailmates. Trust me, it's lots of fun.

Your teacher's face turns red and fire begins to spew out of her nose. She transforms into a gigantic dragon and roars, "YOU ARE BUT A MERE STUDENT! DO NOT QUESTION ME, MORTAL SCUM. YOU WERE MEANT TO BE IMPRISONED BY THIS ONTARIO SCHOOL CURRICULUM. IF YOU DO NOT OBEY, YOU SHALL DIE BY MY HAND." And just like that, despite your efforts to beat the crap out of her snout with that water bottle you filled earlier, she snatches you up in between her dragon teeth and swallows you whole. [[Continue]]

Whew. You made it through the discussion portion. You waltz out of that exam room feeling light as a feather and are crushed by a falling anvil because honestly, ending this wild ride of a story just like that doesn't seem right.

You're dead now. Yes, the fact that your teacher turned into a dragon did in fact mean that her scaly limbs and whatnot broke through the walls of the school and the ceiling etc. Your teacher's sent back to dragon-teacher land. The school is closed for the rest of the year for repairs and rebuilding. But I just wanted to let you know that despite the casualties following the dragon-splosion, you did contribute to the greater good. Rebuilding the school means that the rest of the students will finally have air conditioning installed and will no longer have to suffer through 35 degree weather in the summertime. You're hailed as a hero for blessing the students of your high school with refreshing AC. See? I knew you shouldn't have studied.

You flip the table over and start yelling. "I PAID $3000 DOLLARS FOR THIS EDUCATION!" you scream. "I EXPECT QUALITY EXAM MATERIAL OR NO EXAM MATERIAL AT ALL. THIS QUESTION DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE!" Your teacher doesn't know how to react. She just sits there, probably scared that you'll flip her desk too. "Please calm down," she says. "Or else I'll call the police." Upon hearing the word "police," you burst out into loud sobs. Your tears flood the ground and both you and your teacher drown. [[Next]]

You probably shouldn't have made such a big deal out of the mistake. What were you thinking? I mean, you already made it this bloody far. Out of all of the options in this story that you choose, you decide to just throw it all away now? You're not aiming for some kind of happy ending? [[Go back and make a better decision. ->The first example of contrast is in stanza 1, where she states that asjdyhfgpuw3bjkefp9oujfbagiu]] Yeesh.

Don't dance and drive. Needless to say, you crash your car. You don't die in the accident but you'll never dance again. Come on, was it really worth it?

I am so not describing this. You know what? You do you. Do what you need to do. Bodily functions are natural things and we should not feel ashamed of those functions. I'll just [[wait until you decide to head out ->Head out to school]] You know. Come out whenever you feel like rejoining the story.