Story: A Day in the Life

A Day in the Life.

On Thursday, Joan jerked awake half an hour before school started. How had she overslept? She had gone to bed directly after finishing all of her homework at 3:00 AM. It had been the most sleep she’d had all week! She cursed and jumped into the shower and out again, throwing on her clothing and brushing her hair at the same time.

“You better not be late to school,” her mother warned her. “Every single tardy goes on your report card, and colleges could see it.”

“I’m leaving now, Mom!” Joan yelled. “Bye!”

She didn’t stop to eat breakfast. Breakfast was for the weak. She could always grab a cookie at Coffeebucks when she went to buy her Triple Gigantico Caffeinator.



A Block. Joan was in her seat five minutes early with her pencils sharpened and arranged on her desk by size. She was hoping her AP Chemistry teacher would write her college recommendation, so she wanted to seem as prepared as possible. She smiled brightly at her teacher when he walked in the door. He started talking, and she opened her notebook.

Hello, class, she wrote. Did you do your homework?

Joan worried, sometimes, that her notes were not thorough enough. She didn’t want to miss a word of the brilliance that came out of her teacher’s mouth, so she wrote everything.

Paraphrasing would be the ultimate travesty.



B Block. Gym Class. Joan had thought carefully about which gym class looked easiest. Eventually, she had chosen the course labeled Pretending to Exercise While Not Doing Much at All. It was a fairly rigorous course. Joan walked an entire lap around the field.



C Block. Joan’s free. It was really nice to sit back in the library and do some of the homework do Monday. She didn’t want to get behind, after all.



D Block. Honors Mathematics. The weakest point in her nearly bulletproof schedule. Her math class was not Advanced Placement. She tried not to let any of her friends see her sneaking into the room with the students who were not as clever as she was.

I’m not one of them! She wanted to shout. I occasionally have trouble in mathematics, but I’m not one of the slower students who cannot learn everything by the AP exam!

Some of the horrifically stupid students in her Honors class were taking only one AP class, or even none!



Lunch. Joan was always ravenous by the time lunch rolled around. She went down to the cafeteria.

They were serving her favorite meal! Fried grease on toast! With extra added sugar!

She knew it was healthy. It came with an apple. Even if she didn’t eat the apple, the thought was still there.



E Block. Latin. Joan had worried that AP English, AP Chemistry, AP History, and Honors Mathematics were not enough. She felt she needed a language. French and Spanish were too common to even consider. Luckily, Latin would look good on any college application.

More importantly, it would help with the SATs. Joan had taken them for the third time last Saturday, and she still had not managed to break 2300. All four of her tutors were very disappointed.



Finally, school had ended. Joan raced off to her job at the Center For Helping Little Children. Every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday she would go there and help little children. On Tuesdays and Fridays she had a different job. She volunteered at the Society of Protecting Our Furry Friends. She already had a college essay planned out about how saving puppies and little children had entirely changed her view of the world.



At five, she said good bye to her supervisor and went home for dinner. She snagged a power bar off of the counter and went into her room to finish all the homework she hadn’t finished and start the homework due later.



She went to bed at 4:30 AM.