—
Naina Mukherjee ∙ 03/15/2025
6:35 am
Wake up and feel the fear of God sink into my bones. Another day, not another victory for the OG. Why? Because I have to go to English class.
6:50 am
Wash my face in glacier water because senioritis makes it too hard to use both taps.
7:00 am
Eat banana bread. Now this may be the highlight of the day. The way it collects on the roof of my mouth in a mushy mass is just…delectable.
7:25 am
The literal Oregon trail. I feel like I’m going to die of dysentery every day on my walk to the G train.
7:35 am
On the train. Should I do every single New York Times game right now? Yes. Frick that Duolingo streak.
8:05 am
Arrive disgustingly on time to my first class instead of dilly-dallying and then telling the teacher my train entered another dimension on the way to school and that’s why I’m late.
8:20 am
Relearn how to read an analog clock to see how much longer I have to scribble incoherencies on my notebook from 9th grade.
8:41 am
Admire the weirdly amazing picture of an airplane I drew in the margins and contemplate becoming an art major.
8:43 am
Never mind, I choose life.
9:32 am
Second period done. I think I’m about ready to leave now considering I learned everything there is to know about physics.
Work and energy, amirite?
11:03 am
This life is a prison—only the bars are double-sided, legal-sized sheets of paper with math on them.
And by math, I don’t mean the fun “1+1” stuff. . I mean the scary, unfriendly numbers—the math with letters. The "the right answer is a decimal" stuff.
11:20 am
Asked my economics teacher why we can’t just print more money and three people ended up dead.
12:00 pm
Lunchtime!
12:37 pm
Show my stolen lock to the bouncer in front of the locker room and get absolutely dripped out in my gym uniform.
1:18 pm
Walking out of gym feeling like the LeBron of badminton.
1:30 pm
Marinate in my major classroom while I inhale the concrete dust that coats every surface in the civil room. It fills my lungs and cures my senioritis.
1:50 pm
Look out the window longingly.
2:10 pm
By this time of the day I have lived five full lifetimes. I can’t even remember what my first-period teacher looks like anymore.
2:50 pm
Crawl to my last class.
3:20 pm
Calculate how many minutes are left and draw little fun shapes on AutoCAD because I am supposedly the future of engineering.
3:34 pm
Finally free from the education demons! I leave school knowing my notes are chicken scratch, my brain is shrinking and I have a lung disease from dust inhalation.