The New Student

Senioritis

The entire summer I was busy writing college applications. I planned on applying MIT, Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), Notre Dame, and other Ivy League colleges. I was second in my class when I graduated junior year and after getting a 2350 on the SAT (a standardized test for college) and a 36 on my ACT, I thought I was ready to apply for MIT as an early applicant. I had rewritten my resume several times and was starting to dread rereading it. Because of my busy schedule with college, I rarely had any time to meet with Hansol, who I was sure was also preparing for college. He had finished 4th in the class and got a 2400 on the SAT and a 34 on the ACT. We promised each other to keep the colleges we were applying to a secret and when we got our final results, we would reveal to each other where we got accepted into. Although it sounded stupid, we wanted to make sure that the colleges we chose weren't based off of each others. We didn't want our relationship to interfere with college. 

My mother was getting quite heavy and sometimes, when I saw her in an uncomfortable state, I rethought my decision of having kids in the future. Originally, I thought of having two kids, but looking at other families, I lowered it to one and now, it might even be zero.

It was finally the first day of school. The previous day, I had just finished my final college applications at 3 am. Dark shadows underneath my eyes, I went to school dressed in Hansol's black sweater, that I had continuously forgotten to return, and dark skinny jeans with a messy braid. I thought that I looked like I had actually tried my best to choose my outfit, but apparently when Hansol saw me at school, the first thing he told me was,"It's bad to sleep with tight jeans on." 

"I didn't sleep with them on," I responded, yawning. 

"Why are you so tired?" 

"I was up until 3 writing college applications."

"Mari, you're too dedicated."

"You've been up late too," I remarked, noticing his tired eyes.

"Well I guess you've caught a hypocrite." He smiled and stifled a yawn. "How has your summer been?"

"College, college, and more college."

"Very impressive."

"Can I just sleep today?" I sat down in an empty seat and put my head on the desk. 

"You should probably check on what the teacher thinks about sleeping." 

Sighing, I lifted my head up and looked up to see our new teacher. It was this squat bald man who waddled in our classroom. He was too short for the podium. Rolling my eyes, I plopped back down onto my desk.

Roll was shortly called afterwards and I felt myself dozing off when something suddenly hit my head. "Ouch!" I cried out grasping my head. The short teacher was standing in front of me with a ruler. He hit me with a ruler? 

"Student! What are you doing? Sleeping through math! How absurd! Go up to the board and solve that math question!" 

Sleepily, I got out of my seat and walked up to the board. He expected me to solve this question? That was plain ridiculous. I was pretty sure that my unborn younger sibling could solve it. Seriously. The question was: "An infinite geometric sequence has a common ration of -5/3 and a sum of 45. What is the first term of the sequence?" I scoffed while mentally doing the math in my mind. Working backwards with the formula, I quickly scribbled '120' on the board and started walking back to my seat. 

"Excuse me student, you must show your work!" I turned back and walked up to the board. He was probably asking me to show my work because he couldn't do the math that quickly. Whatever. I wrote the formula: (n1)/(1-cr) = sum. (cr is the common ratio and n1 is the first term of the sequence)

[Mari's work]

(n1)/(1-cr)=sum

(n1)/(1-(-5/3))=45

(n1)/(1+5/3)=45

(n1)/(8/3)=45

n1=120

I circled my final answer and walked back to my desk. 

"Student," the teacher asked. "What is your name?"

"Mari Su," I responded promptly.

"When did you learn this?"

"About three or four years ago."

"Solve this problem."

Yikes, the second question was considerably harder than the first one. Was he really going to make me do all of this work just because I slept a little?

The question had to do with trigonometry and after evaluating the question further, I recognized the identities that I had to use. Circling the final answer, I bowed to my teacher and sat back down. 

"Why were you sleeping?" he asked.

"I was writing my college applications until 3 am sir."

He raised his eyebrows, impressed. "Congratulations Mrs. Su, you just freed yourself from possible detention."

"Thank you sir," I said. 

The class progressed and instead of sleeping, I stared outside the window daydreaming until...

"Mari, Mari Su, Mari Su," a familiar deep voice awoke me and I smiled tiredly at Hansol.

"Hey," I said. But something was wrong, he was frowning at me. "What's wrong?"

"I need to talk to you."

Oh no, this didn't sound good. We walked outside the classroom and he suddenly faced me, angry. I was shocked and slowly backed away.

"What were you thinking?!"

"About what?"

"What happened to you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You're just different!"

"What the heck are you talking about?"

"Why are you suddenly so...so rebellious?!"

I stayed silent, my eyes wide.

"You were being so disrespectful! I didn't know that a person like you could be like that!"

I looked away, avoiding his eyes.

"How tired are you to be doing this?" he asked, his voice softer and quieter.

"Really tired," I whispered, tears starting to pool in my eyes. He was disappointed in me. I felt so shameful and terrible. 

"Have you not slept at all?"

"I pulled an all-nighter the day before-" Oh no. He had told me not to spend any all-nighters during my summer when we were calling each other.

"Mari! I told you not to!"

"I know!" My anger suddenly flared up. "But I had to! I had a good idea in my mind! If I slept then it would've disappeared! And you know how long it takes to edit a paper! That's why I was up until three!"

"Mari-"

"No, stop." I turned away from him. "I'll go. I understand." I started to walk away towards the cafeteria when my phone suddenly vibrated. It was a picture message from Hansol. What now?! I opened it to see a picture of us from prom. My phone vibrated again. It was a photo from when we went to eat ice cream together. Another one of us at a theme park. Another one of us on a roller coaster, then at the movies, then with our faces painted, then at the beach, then at the pool. It was an endless string of photos of our countless dates in chronological order that we had taken on his phone. The flow of pictures stopped and I turned back around to look at him but he was already gone.