Trapped in Myself

Chapter 4

I look at my schedule and find my way to my first class. Ugh, math, I think. I am good at math, but it is incredibly boring. Besides, who wants to have math first thing in there morning? Not me, that's for sure.

I walk into the classroom and glance around. I notice that the desks are put into groups. Great, I'm gonna have to sit with people. I'm not much of a people person, I get major social anxiety and I'm used to everyone being an ass to me.
There isn't many people in the classroom yet, so I sit at an empty table in the far left corner of the room. As students begin to file into the classroom, I secretly hope no one chooses to sit by me. Suddenly I notice a familiar looking guy walk into the room. He scans the room looking for a place to sit. Then he sees me, and makes his way over to me. He sits down across from me.
"Hey, I'm Jacob." He says.
"I'm Ashton." I say shyly.
"I know, David introduced you this morning." He chuckles. So that's why he looks familiar, I think to myself. "It's cool if I sit here, right?" He questions nicely.
I nod. "Yeah it's fine. It beats having some random kid sit here." I say. The bell rings and the teacher walks in. The room is filled with voices telling their friends what they did over the summer. The teacher walks up to the front of the room.
"Alright class," He says to grab our attention. "Welcome to Algebra 1. I'm Mr. Smith and I'll be your teacher. You will be expected to participate in discussion, turn your work in on time and pass this class. If I notice any problems about where you have chosen to sit, I will relocate you. Freshmen often think they can pull a fast one on me and get away with stuff. But that's not gonna happen in this room, as I have many years of experience." He says. "Any questions?" He asks and looks around. No one raises their hand. "Excellent. What I'm passing out now is the class syllabus. It contains all of the rules and expectations for this class. If you fail to follow these rules, you will be handled accordingly. I will not hesitate to take the actions needed to remove you from this class if you become a disturbance. You can talk while you work, but if you get too distracted or you become a distraction to others, I will make you work quietly. When we take notes and have discussions, I expect you to participate and not have side conversations. I will not talk over you, so please do not hold up the class. As long as you are on task, you should never have homework. If the class becomes a problem, I will assign extra work. Understood?" He finishes. Everyone nods slowly. "Fantastic. Let's start with some warm ups to get your brain flowing again. Please complete the problems on the board. I will give you 10 minutes and then I will call on people to go up to the board and solve a problem." He says as he walks back to his desk.

I look at the board. Wow, these problems are fairly easy, I think to myself. I open up my notebook and begin writing down the problem. I'm finished within 5 minutes, so I just sit quietly. The teacher walks over to me.
"Can you go up and do the first problem please?" He asks me. I nod and walk up to the board. I solve the problem and go back to my seat. "Excellent." He begins. "Did everyone get the same answer?" He asks. "Is there anyone that would like me to explain this problem?" He asks, looking around. No one says anything. "Good. Who would like to do the next problem?" He glances around. An obnoxious boy raises his hand and races up to the board. He solves the problem and sits back down. He announces loudly that he had no struggle solving this problem. I scoff. Great, a teachers pet. The most annoying thing on the planet, I think to myself.
The class flies by fairly quickly, and soon the bell rings. I pull out my schedule and look to see where my next class is.
Hell yeah, I love art, I think to myself as I walk into the classroom.
The rest of the day pretty much went on the same, introduction, class rules, the basics of a first day of the year.