I slap myself awake. It is time to learn algebra, not to sleep. I hear the voice of Mrs. Young as I doze off again. There is an annoyed kind of tone in her voice, probably because most of the students in the class are doing the same thing I am.

I stare out the window to my right. I see squirrels, lots of squirrels just running around without any purpose at all. The squirrels have it so easy, to just be able to run around all day without having to do what they are told. The squirrels don’t have homework. The squirrels don’t have tests, or quizzes, or declamations. They are completely stress-free. I need to pay attention.

I catch myself daydreaming and immediately face the front of the classroom.. Mrs. Young looks at me as she tells the class about factorials. "The exclamation point that comes after the number signifies that it is a factorial, and not that the number is in a state of excitement," she says. A few people laugh. I look out the window again.

On my way to Western Civ., I begin hearing a guitar riff in my head. It is amazing; the song is better than anything that I have ever heard. I want desperately to write it down or record it. Things like this always happen in my mind, things that I want to be able to write down to remember later. I simply do not have the time. I open the door to the classroom and see that I am the first person here. I take my seat and people immediately begin coming in. Pretty soon, the whole class, including L.R., has arrived. Everyone is here, that is, except for David. As the tests are being handed out, I begin picturing David running to class and being very angry. The thought of this makes me laugh out loud, and L.R. stares at me. I write my name on the test just before he says, as usual, "Put your name at the top or lose ten points." Right as he says the word "points", David comes running into the classroom.

"That’s two hours for you!" L.R. yells.

"I was finishing a quiz," David says.

"Two!" L.R. repeats.

"Oh, ok, that makes perfect sense," David sarcastically remarks as he takes his seat.

I look at the first question of the test, and I am immediately uninterested. The very last thing that I feel like doing right now is answering questions about Mr. L.R. Smith’s great-great-great aunt. I stare out the window and see a group of students having a conversation. It is almost as if these students go to a different school than I do. They obviously are not taking the classes that I am taking, or they would be studying during every free moment that they have. Two of the students begin fighting. I watch for a few minutes, but then decide that I should get this test over with.

My next class is Ethics. I sit in the class and listen to Ron Smith lecture about Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and how truths can be different for different people.

"Now what if Garrett here smoked crack," he asks. Everyone laughs. "I mean, we could say that doing so is wrong, but what if it isn’t considered so to him?"

All I want to do is watch a video. I stare out the window for the third class in a row. There is a group of four men working on top of a roof, and I instantly picture them doing the "YMCA" dance. I laugh out loud. Mr. Smith stares at me for a while and then makes another joke about Garrett smoking crack.

Walking to lunch with David, all I can think about is what kind of disgusting excuse for food they will serve today. "Dude that algebra quiz was ridiculous," he says, "We never went over any of that material, how can she expect us to know what to do?" Despite his efforts to get me to talk about it, I remain uninterested in talking about the same things that we talk about every single day, our homework load, about the ridiculous number of tests and quizzes that we have every week.

At lunch, I find out that it is taco day. I immediately go for the panini grill, but I soon realize that several other people were thinking the same thing. I stand behind the crowd for a while, but then decide to just wait it out. I again think about being at sea, and for once one of my random thoughts has reoccurred. In my daydream, I am in a wooden boat on the ocean. There is no land in sight in any direction. All is well. All is at peace. Suddenly, a tidal wave comes out of nowhere from beneath the glassy surface of the water. I try to get away, but there is no motor on the boat. The wave closes in at an incredibly slow rate, almost unnaturally slow. As soon as it is about to hit the boat, as soon as I am about to be swept away beneath the wave’s undertow, I snap out of my daydream. Random, I know, but my mind is like that.

At my advisor table, everybody is discussing their grades for the semester. I feel like I should be doing the same, but all that is on my mind is the integrated science project that my group is not nearly finished with. I almost know for a fact that we will not be able to complete the project, even though we have been going after school to work on it for six consecutive days. My thoughts are interrupted as Mr. Nollenberger announces that lunch is over.

It’s time for English. It is another one of those days when we work on our "Things I Carry" papers during the class period. As I plug in my USB drive, I am suddenly overcome with exhaustion. I know that I should just get over it and work on my paper, but all I can think about is getting home and going to bed. I nearly fall asleep at the computer, and when the bell finally rings, I realize that I have written only two sentences, and not even good ones. I will probably end up completely changing or even deleting them for the final draft.

Now it is time for the long and drawn-out forty-five minutes between the end of the school day and the arrival of the afternoon bus. I sit on a sofa in the student center listening to a group of freshman talk about how they have too many heavy books to carry around during the day. I turn around in the direction of the group and see a student holding up three books. "Completely ridiculous," the boy says. Completely ridiculous I think to myself, only I mean him and not the three very light books that he is holding.

I take my seat on the bus and immediately fall into a deep sleep. It seems like merely seconds later that I am awakened by the loud noise of sixty students making their way to the front of the bus. When I get off the bus and into the car, I fall right back to sleep.

At home, I am burdened by my heavy load of homework. I just want to go to bed, but I am not permitted to do so. I sit with my Western Civ. book in my lap, thinking about how great the summer will be. I doze off a few times. I soon decide to just give up trying to study and go to sleep, even though it is against what I know that I should do.

I get into bed and turn on the television. I turn to some late-night show, and I almost immediately fall asleep. I guess nothing can hold my attention for more than a few seconds.