Nothing says desperation like an American college student digging through their wallet. I know that’s what the cashier is thinking while watching me frantically search for my card.
She’s not wrong; though I just paid my $25k tuition, the $10 price of bacon seems a little too steep for me.
Sarina Northway is an English and psychology double major at the University of South Carolina. Though not very experienced, she is working on her first traditionally published novel, Dead Girl Walking.
Every tick of the clock reverberated throughout the vast lecture hall. The biology students stared blankly as the lecture dragged on—monotonous drivel about clinical study results.
Post hoc, ad hoc, quid pro quo…
Twenty minutes in, only the snores made sense, and the rumbling from my stomach.
“Class dismissed.”
Christa is a medical writer with a passion for creative expression. She has had her poetry and short stories featured in several publications, including River Poets Journal, Tanka / Haiku Journal, Rune Bear, and Every Day Fiction. Currently she resides in South Jersey with her five feline muses.
Death comes creeping slowly, quietly, closer and closer.
My Priest says not to worry about it, that the pain will only be momentary. But what does he know? He’ll still be alive.
Ever closer the fatal date creeps, until at last it is here.
Time to take my math final.
Daniel Quillen is a retired HR director and a writer (19+ books). He lives in Centennial, Colorado with his wife. They are the parents of six children, grandparents of fifteen. They are currently living in China, teaching English at a Chinese University.
We waited until the twittering mums at the school gates dispersed before leaping the fence.
Instead of Geography, the Ferris wheel. Candyfloss for a packed lunch. Faces painted like tigers in place of double Art.
Home, hours late. Still gleeful, until I realised I’d forgotten to wash my whiskers off.
Rachael is a teacher from Scotland.
As a pack, my students hold the power. I walk a tightrope every second of every minute at school. One wrong move, one wrong word, and I lose it all. The balance between order and chaos is one child’s silent acquiescence.
They think they know it all…
Mercifully, they don’t.
Joan is an educator in Australia.
The smell of the chalk dust reminded him of some past dated food. He imagined thousands of others who would have breathed it in and eventually gone to their graves having never exhaled it entirely.
Ninety eight more lines to go.
He scrawled, “I promise not to daydream in class.”
Gordon Lysen resides in Manitoba, Canada, and spends his time between the city of Winnipeg and his true home at Sugar Point on Lake Manitoba. Retired from police work after some 27 years, Gordon co-authored the novel “A Deadly Blend of Souls” with his wife, Lisa. Writing and painting are Gordon’s relaxation methods when retirement becomes too stressful.
“Rats roam the library at night,” I told the Dean. “Students bring in food, don’t clean up after themselves. There’s roaches, too.”
She asked for a solution.
“Get rid of them,” I responded.
“Obviously,” she said, then asked, “Rodents or students?”
“Both.”
“They’d still find a way into the building.”
Matthew Gregory is a writer and filmmaker whose short films “Alamogordo, NM,” “guarda innanzi che tu salti,” and “Joseph Jefferson Solves the Hunger Problem” have been featured in the 1:1 Super 8 Cinema Soirée. He has also worked as a writer and camera operator for the forthcoming film Papa. He lives in South Florida.
Lachlan was coolest.
He could throw a ball.
He could beat up anyone.
He got dates with the hotties.
And he always managed to outsource his homework.
He tried out for quarterback one day. Fortunately for everyone else, he didn’t see the safety blitz.
Lachlan wasn’t so cool after all.
Joey wasn’t interested in writing while at school but has been writing on his own in recent years. He doesn’t mind the concept of “schoolyard justice”.
Once it was the worst.
Now the teachers all get merit pay increases, the superintendent wins national awards, the average SAT is 2303, and all graduates go to Harvard.
Actually, the only graduate. They kicked the other students out in first grade. That’s how they keep the averages so high.
Harry Demarest has retired after careers encompassing scientific research, teaching at a university, software development, web application development, and voter database compilation and distribution. He is now spending his time with his grandchildren and writing memoirs and short stories.
It wasn’t Georges fault and, as usual, it was most unfair. He hadn’t been the only one smoking. The school had been really dry after the hot weather, and full of unnecessary paper.
And he had only struck one match and he hadn’t even flicked it.
Not very much, anyway.
Richard Wheal is a writer and trainee carpenter who live in a forest in Dorset and spends a great deal of time gathering winter fuel.