I Hate Papers
Written by: Kain“Damn, that paper was hard, wasn’t it?” Kara takes out her binder and pulls out a small stack of printed papers.
“Yeah, I took me like four hours to do.”
“Let me see yours.” Kara leans over and looks at Christie’s paper. She gets a puzzled look on her face. Flipping between her paper and Christie’s, she compares the two.
“Why is your paper about the Depression, Christie?”
“That’s what the article was about.”
“Uh...Christie, the article was about the election of 1800. You know, between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr?” Christie thinks for a moment. She pulls a book out of her bag and flips the pages.
“No it wasn’t. See?” She shows the article to Kara. Kara takes the book and glances at the article, then flips to the front cover.
“Christie...you were supposed to read the eighth article in the first volume. This is volume 2.” A look of dawning horror comes across Christie’s face. She lowers her head and plants her hand firmly on her forehead.
“I can’t believe I did my entire paper on the wrong article. I am so screwed, he’ll never accept this.” She waves her paper around in frustration.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure if you talk to him, he’ll give you a chance to redo it for full credit. I mean, it was a fluke accident, right? It could’ve happened to anyone.”
“I guess he might.” The two students look up from their desks as the door opens. Christie gets ready to get up and to talk to the professor, but sits down with a sigh of relief as she realizes that the new arrival is just a fellow student. The student sits down at the nearest desk and flops his head onto the surface with a loud thump. Christie and Kara watch him for a moment.
“Hey, Kain.” Christie cheerfully greets Kain. Kain lifts his head up slightly and through one, bloodshot eye, looks around to see who was keeping him awake. Surprisingly, though there are only two other people in the room, it takes him a moment to figure out who greeted him.
“Hey...um...you.”
“Christie.”
“Right...Chrissy.”
“No, Christie.” Kain sits up and focuses on her with two, bloodshot eyes. He takes a deep breath before speaking.
“I think you overestimate how much I care.” Kara laughs a bit to herself, getting the attention of both her classmates.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh, but...why are you so tired, Kain?” Kain thinks for a moment.
“I was up all night doing that paper.”
“It was hard wasn’t it?”
“Not really. I just tried writing it while watching Angel. I think a good portion of it might actually be me talking about the relationship between Spike and Angel.”
“Don’t you think that might hurt your grade?” Christie asks, laughing.
“Can’t hurt me any more than the refusing to take the quizzes.”
“True.”
“Why do you refuse to take the quizzes anyway?” Kain looks up thoughtfully.
“They make me feel bad when I get bad grades.”
“But you know this stuff, you’d do really well.” Christie makes a valid argument.
“Yes, well, I don’t like doing work either.” Christie and Kara look at each other and then back at Kain as if he had grown a second nose. Kain didn’t care.
The door flies open and in walks three more students. They look around the room at everyone and then decide to sit next to each other. Kain, as usual, is on the opposite side of the room, nearest the door. Christie looks up at one of the students. “Dave! Perfect! I screwed up, can you give me some advice?”
“Sure, I’ll do what I can.”
“Okay, I did the paper due for today, but the problem is that I did it on the wrong article. What should I do?” Dave thinks a moment.
“Well, the only thing you really can do is talk to him about it.” Christie pouts slightly. “Well, Jason what do you...” Dave stops short of his sentence when he realizes that Jason is fast asleep and slowly falling on him. The door in the outside hall opens and familiarly smacks into the wall, the calling card of the professor. Christie slides down into her chair, imagining the professor yelling at her about not being able to do anything right. The doorknob for the classroom turns slowly. The door creaks open. An older woman peaks her head inside.
“Are you guys here for Mr. Whelvin’s class?”
A collective “yes” is muttered.
“Oh, his class was cancelled do to his not feeling well.” Everyone mutters and slowly gets up. Christie breathes a sigh of relief and is glad to have more time to write the actual paper. Kain looks at the older woman with one bloodshot eye.
“You mean I was up till 2am finishing this paper for nothing? I could have slept in? I didn’t have to get up...at all?”
Nervously, the woman responds, “That’s basically correct.”
Kain shrugs, “Well, I’m off to my own devices then.” The crew disperses from the building and goes about their day. Dave goes back to sleep. Jason was left on the classroom floor, asleep. He doesn’t wake up till two days later when the class convenes again. Kain and Kara go and eat breakfast, where Kain tries to explain how he connected Angel to the election of 1800. Kara then tells him that the professor would never buy it. It should be noted that Kain got a perfect score on that paper after a small revision advised by Kara. Christie, relieved that she had time to write a new paper, put it off till the last minute anyway. She spent the rest of that day hanging out with her friends.