Chapter 64: The Joy of Academic Suffering

Chapter 64: Chapter 64: The Joy of Academic Suffering

Monday morning, I had Nicole drop me off a few blocks from campus, which she accepted with all the grace and dignity of someone being betrayed by the man she loved.

She pouted the entire time I explained why I didn’t want her driving me all the way to the university gates, and she was still pouting when I got out of the car. I promised to see her later, which helped a little, but not enough to stop her from giving me one last look that suggested I had ruined her morning.

Campus was quieter than usual. Not completely quiet, obviously. This was still a university full of students who could turn almost any situation into an excuse to make noise, but test week had a way of making even the loud ones reconsider their life choices.

People sat outside lecture halls with notebooks open, murmuring definitions to themselves or asking each other questions they probably should have asked days ago. A few groups were gathered under the trees, comparing notes with the tense concentration of people trying to figure out whether they’d studied the right material. Even the usual crowd near the cafeteria seemed less interested in arguing about football or who’d asked who out and more interested in whatever awaited them in their next paper.

My first paper was Professor Thompson’s, and it wasn’t until nine-thirty. I had time to kill, so I headed to our usual spot to hang out with the guys before Professor Thompson got his chance to ruin my day.

They were already there when I arrived. I took my usual seat beside Sasha and pulled out my phone, facing Jackson and Evelyn across the table. Jackson had a textbook open in his hands, reading without so much as looking up, while Evelyn had a notebook spread across her lap and was flipping through her notes. Sasha, meanwhile, was quietly repeating something under her breath, pausing every few seconds to frown at the page in front of her before starting again.

It was almost peaceful, in a slightly depressing sort of way.

Then Jackson shut his textbook and leaned back in his seat.

"Okay. That’s it. If I read one more word, my brain is going to explode."

I smirked and kept scrolling. Jackson glanced at me, then at my phone, looking increasingly offended by how little I seemed to care about the suffering we were all supposed to share.

"Are you seriously sitting there chatting on your phone while the rest of us are fighting for our lives?"

I turned the screen toward him, letting him see the PDF opened on my phone.

Jackson leaned closer and squinted at it before his expression slowly changed. "You’re reading AE 310? We don’t even have it until Friday."

"I’m aware."

Jackson stared at me for another moment before looking at Evelyn. "I hate studying with him."

Sasha looked up from her notes. "You should be glad you’re in the same class as Nathan. My seatmate, Venessa? She’s already counting on me to feed her answers."

Jackson considered that for a moment. "You know what? You have a point."

Sasha smirked. "Of course I do—"

"Can you guys shut it?" Evelyn asked.

She finally looked up from her notebook and gave Sasha a glare. Then she turned the same glare on Jackson, making sure he got his share of it too.

"Got it," Jackson said immediately. "No more talking."

Sasha pressed her lips together, looking dangerously close to laughing.

I smirked and went back to reading.

Eventually, it was time to head to class. Jackson and I packed up our things and made our way to our lecture hall, leaving Sasha and Evelyn to head to their own departments. We arrived with enough time to settle into our usual seats, with Jackson beside me, as the last few students trickled in.

The room was mostly quiet, though a few people were still murmuring to themselves or whispering questions to their seatmates. Someone a few rows ahead was flipping through their notes for what had to be the fifth time, while another student kept muttering a formula under his breath as if repeating it enough times might guarantee he’d remember it when he needed it.

Professor Thompson stood at the front of the hall, leaning against the edge of his desk with a smirk that made me wonder if watching students suffer was what kept him energized throughout the week. He looked far too pleased with himself for a man who hadn’t even handed out the questions yet.

He finally straightened up and glanced at the clock. "All right, time’s up. You have ten seconds to put your books away." He paused. "Ten. Nine..."

The room immediately fell apart. Books snapped shut, notebooks disappeared into bags, and someone a few rows ahead shoved his notes into his backpack so quickly that half of them ended up on the floor. Somewhere near the back, a textbook went flying, skidded across the floor, and stopped right at Professor Thompson’s feet.

His smirk widened at that "Six. Five..."

Jackson leaned toward me. "Look at his face. He looks like an anime villain."

"Mahito," a guy sitting behind us whispered. "He looks like Mahito."

I glanced back at him. He looked completely serious.

Honestly, I could see the resemblance. Professor Thompson seemed to be enjoying this far more than any reasonable person should, and the fact that he was counting down while an entire lecture hall panicked wasn’t helping his case.

"Two. One."

And just like that, the room went silent.

Professor Thompson looked around the hall, his smirk growing wider despite my sincere belief that it had nowhere left to go. "Ah, the sound of silence. There’s nothing quite like it before a test, is there?"

Nobody answered him. Whatever response he was hoping for, he was going to have to get it from someone else.

His smirk faltered, and he frowned at the room before picking up the stack of test scripts from his desk. He handed some to Blake and gave another stack to a student on the opposite side of the hall.

"Pass them down," he said. "One per person."

The papers began making their way through the rows. When ours finally reached us, I took one and passed the rest along before turning to the questions.

Jackson leaned over his own copy, scanned the page for a moment, then turned toward me and whispered, "Do you know number two?"

I looked at it. "Uh... yeah."

"Sweet."

The guy behind us leaned forward just enough to whisper, "What about number six?"

I was about to look for it when Professor Thompson’s voice cut across the hall.

"Nathan, to the front. Come sit with Blake. You too, Mr. Hayes."

Jackson immediately lowered his head, but not before I caught the grin he was trying to hide.

A few guys around us let out low groans. Professor Thompson, on the other hand, looked like he’d just made his morning.

The test itself was anything but quiet in the beginning. Papers rustled, chairs shifted, and a few people let out quiet sighs as they worked their way through the questions. Professor Thompson had somehow managed to turn a single test paper into a personal attack on the entire third-year Mechanical Engineering class.

I worked through the questions at a steady pace, checking my calculations before moving on. Jackson was doing the same beside me, and for a while, neither of us had much reason to look up.

Professor Thompson, unfortunately, seemed to be having the time of his life.

He strolled between the rows with his hands clasped behind his back, occasionally stopping to peer over someone’s shoulder. Every time he caught a student staring helplessly at a question, his mouth twitched like he was trying not to laugh. He looked like he could already see the stack of scripts he’d be marking as failures.

Being at the front didn’t stop people from trying their luck, either. Every now and then, one of the guys behind us would lean forward and whisper a question whenever Professor Thompson was on the other side of the hall. I helped where I could without making a whole production out of it, though I wasn’t about to spend the test doing someone else’s work for them.

By the time I finished checking my answers, the clock had crept past ten forty-two. I put my pen down and looked over the script one last time, then sat back and waited.

I could have handed it in and left, but walking out that early would have made me look like one of those guys who wanted everyone to know he’d finished before the rest of the class. I wasn’t interested in that kind of attention, so I stayed, helped a few guys when I could, and occasionally glanced at Jackson, who seemed to be doing the same.

It was eleven thirty-seven when I finally handed in my script and left the hall.

I collected my bag, slung it over one shoulder, and pulled out my phone as I stepped into the corridor.

A message from Nicole, sent earlier this morning, was already waiting for me.

10:01 AM

Nicole: Come to my office when you’re done with your first paper ??

I read it twice, then smiled to myself.

Well, that was one way to make sure I had something to look forward to after Professor Thompson’s little performance.