How I ended my school term

I made a little yelp when my professor took the exam from my hand, because that was the last, very last chance of the year to prevent failure, rejection from nursing school, and the resulting descent into crack-whoring. Then he made a terrible mistake. He said, "What did you end up choosing for those two problems over which you forced me into a five-minute conversation in the middle of the exam about the subtle implications of my wording and the possibility that words like that could mean anything, just anything?"

I showed him. He told me I got one wrong.

And then, you know how adrenaline can kind of hit you all at once after you do something impossible? How suddenly everything gets sparkly and hazed at the same time and you begin to shake and develop a tiny case of Turette's? That happened. And I freaked out and staged a ten minute protest that involved multiple pictures on the board and the dropping of very exclusive neurotransmitter names, and I threw myself into his chair not once but twice, and yelled "No" over and over. There was actual sweating involved, and even when the woman standing near me said, "It's only one point," I argued on, absolutely sure that I deserved the goddamn point but more importantly that my exceptional and very complicated, pretzel-tying intelligence had to be acknowledged because I knew it, dammit, I understood the information, I just understood it too well, and that was the problem.

That is what I call class.