My hand shakes and sweats. I regrip my slipping pencil. Its sharpened grey tip hovers above ten untouched pages of Taylor polynomials. My mind focuses on the click of the clock and the scratching of dozens of other pencils, other students swiftly and calmly making their way through the exam. All the while, my pencil remains paralyzed.

Five hours prior, I had lain in my bed after eight arduous hours of nail-biting and Sladering and Khan Academy, trying to wrap my brain around the impossible topic that is Taylor polynomials. My eyes had been closed, but I wasn’t asleep. Thoughts of integrals and series filled my mind, the insides of my stomach performed wrenching twists, and my heart threatened to burst through my ribcage. So when my alarm went off, it was just a signal to stand up out of bed. Like a robot, I swung my legs onto the cold floor and stumbled out the door. The sun had yet to emerge from its slumber. T-seven hours until the start of the test. 

As soon as I got into my car, my arm extended towards the dashboard to tune into Morning Edition, but then it stopped in its path — Steve Inskeep’s reports would surely displace any fragments of math knowledge that rested on the precipice of my short-term memory. I began the drive with only the vicious rumble of the engine to disrupt the silence. 

As I drove to school, I spoke out loud the Taylor polynomial patterns. Maybe it was the zero sleep the night before, but I kept messing up my recitations. A forgotten negative sign here, an omitted sign-alternator there. Each slip-up was matched with a frustrated pump on the gas pedal and a slight veer out of the lane. After enough time had elapsed for me to fumble each one of the Taylor patterns, I found myself in the school parking lot. 

I disembarked my car, slung my half-zipped backpack over my shoulder, and ran from the parking lot to the math building in hopes that if I got blood-pumping through my body, I might wake up and sharpen my focus. With each stride I took, the zipper on my backpack unraveled one more inch. When I arrived at the door, my pencil pouch and calculator cascaded onto the concrete. 

As I bent to retrieve the runaway school supplies, a throbbing pain began in my right temple. The building developed rainbow specks as it performed a 180° before my eyes. I seized the door handle. Once the specks had faded and my vision had recalibrated, I let out a sharp exhale as I shoved my way into the building and plopped down in the math office to try once again to force myself to make sense of the odd symbols in my notes. 

Three hours later, I sat with question-mark posture, hunched over the wooden desk whose rubber corner-protectors I had picked and prodded and torn. As my stomach snarled, I caught wind of my classmates’ laughs from down the hallway; they were returning from an off-campus lunch excursion. I felt heat rush to my cheeks. Within a few seconds, some kids in my math class strolled into the room where I was working. They casually discussed the contents of the test. The heat in my cheeks intensified. 

Soon enough, the bell rang, signifying test-time. I retrieved a blank copy of the exam, sweat-drenched pencil clutched in hand. After sixty minutes of knee-bouncing and hair-pulling, I watched myself hand in a packet filled with meaningless scribbles. I left the room and retraced my steps to the parking lot, but this time, I walked. My eyelids stood upright, and my stomach sat still. 

The next morning in math class, we received the graded exams. As I flipped through the packet filled with red slashes and x’s and “no!”s, I waited for my gut to begin its routine somersaults. I noticed my math teacher approach the white board. He began to work through the test. The negatives and sign alternators began to take form. I looked down at my test and my eyes rested again on ten red x’s, a “minus 10,” and another “no!” scrawled over some botched work from the day before. All the while, my stomach had yet to begin its backflips.