Just like that, it was over
Math was my last real class of freshman year. I remember that my teacher spent the period explaining what it meant to flatten the curve, or slow the spread of COVID-19 cases throughout the world. During a five-minute break, he watched in exasperation as my friends and I dug spoons into one cafeteria pudding cup.
After class, everyone was called into an assembly, rain sprinkling over our heads as we rushed into the auditorium from class. The principal told us that school would resume after spring break. This was only a precaution, the teachers said. And just like that, the school year as I knew it was over.
Classes continued at home. Instead of scribbling personal notes on paper, I texted my classmates, making sure not to look down from the screen for too long. In the time before distance learning, a friend and I would share our geometry solutions on the whiteboard every day, alternating the letters in purple and green ink to waste time before the lesson. We jazzed up our proofs with happy faces and exclamation points. Now we turned off our cameras in randomized breakout rooms while one person typed the answer on a virtual class whiteboard.
Three days before finals, the administration made all tests optional. Taking one and getting a good score could improve your grade, but after doing the calculations, I realized that even a perfect score would raise mine only one percent. My teacher advised me to skip it and be done.
That weekend I studied postulates and theorems for hours. When test day came, no one was able to finish given the two-hour slot, so the teacher gave the three of us unlimited time.
Two days later, I was finished. I redrew diagrams and punched numbers into my calculator over and over, as though a perfect score could replace what we’d lost. My pencils paled in comparison to purple-and-green whiteboard markers.
When I got my test back, I saw that I had failed more questions than I would want to admit. There was no camaraderie in this loss, no post-exam ritual of reviewing every answer. I flopped onto my bed alone, not on the library couch with friends.
Just like that, it was over.