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Description
This is a school day.

It starts with a bell, loud and shrill, shocking students out of complacency. Conversations drag to reluctant ends, as friends take shuffling steps towards learning. You can pick the morning people out by their strides, quick and purposeful, cutting through the sluggish crowd with practiced ease. Binders are clutched to chests, bags slung carelessly over shoulders, and the hallways slowly empty as the school vanishes behind doors. There are two types of stragglers: the panicked and the slacker. One will dash through the door moments after the bell, breathing hard and cowering beneath the teacher's cold gaze. The other may meander in at their leisure, or not at all.

Classes are defined by the man or woman at the front of the room, and the students seated at the desks. The material is of little importance. Some are orderly, time divided into neat sections, precisely enough time for each task if you work at an average rate. Others are run with never-ending enthusiasm and not much of a plan. Some teachers grade by talent, others by intelligence, still others by effort. But all the variety in the world is the same after it has been experienced a dozen times. One fades into another without much notice. The universally embraced bell is that announcing lunch.

The teachers hurry to their sanctuary to complain about their students, as the students gather to complain about their teachers. Lunches are grabbed, purchased, eaten, ignored. Food is not the purpose, but merely a part of the routine of lunchtime. Social groups scurry to their own little corners of the school, tucking themselves away. Others wander freely. Conversation is the reigning queen, silence banished in the face of new gossip and discussions.

The bell takes sadistic joy in rousing them, as they reluctantly part ways. No longer physically exhausted, but now intellectually weary, they eagerly count down to their release. Another class, seemingly without end, seconds ticking away like minutes, and they long for mindlessness. An eternity of an afternoon passes and not five minutes goes by without a glance at the clock.

It ends the same way it began, but now the sound is of metal on metal, as if hundreds of manacles have been broken all at once. Students fly away, seizing backpacks, making plans, walking, jumping on buses-- the day is over. As lessons float out of heads, the real day begins.