To That One Teacher in That One Class

To that one teacher in that one class

Who made us all believe that his final

Will be easy and short,

So we all prepared strenuously for other classes,

Filling up the hungered desire for knowledge

And good grades, while textbooks for that one class

Laid untouched, collecting dust, and only slightly

Probing away at our consciousness in the back end of our mind and

Thank you to that one teacher who - after giving us easiest quizzes all semester -

Gave us absolute hell on a final, completely not preparing us for how

Hot and exhausting that hell was going to be and even so,

Thank you, for letting us quickly review for your class for a mere 3 hour period, the day before,

While we spent entire days in the library drowning in the flood of

Books, notes, and practice quizzes; however, if you would have explained

The impossibility of some of your problems and the constant feeling of

Running just behind the clock, almost reaching it, but it still slipping right under our grasps,

Since time is a much faster racer than us - I learned - and it crossed the finish line,

Well before us - and we could do nothing more but work our legs to the absolute limit

And well beyond, yet see nothing more but dust of a trail that was left behind and

Thank you to that one test for letting us leak more ink on our hands as we thought it out

Than on paper of laborious problems for which the answer seemed

About as obvious as the solution for world hunger,

And yet, you have expected us to know it well enough

To have the nerve of putting it on our final, and

Have you - that one teacher - realized your mistake

As you called out the last ten minutes and all of us

Sweared under our breath as not a single person could finish

That test,

And you - that one teacher - could hear a collective choir of

Our hearts beating faster to the symphony of our hands writing nonsense

And guesses faster than our mind could process our own thought, but

We just wanted something on paper, and we wanted to

Thank you - that one teacher - who managed to break an entire classes’ spirit by

Simply saying two words - those two damned words -

Times up.