hot and cold

It's not that I was a great test-taker growing up (Damn that 1580! so close to genius, yet so far away), but I wasn't particularly bad either. However, unlike teachers, parents and superintendents, at a very early age, I realized the true goal within testing was not to score well, but to finish quickly.

"It's not a race, David," various teachers would remind me, but they were wrong. So wrong. It was a race!

Who cares about grades when you can triumphantly walk to the front of the class to place a photocopied sheet down on the teacher's crowded desk, looking round to realize that you are the first to finish. Savoring that feeling of sweet victory when you catch a fleeting look of jealousy and spite from the other S-L-O-O-O-O-W students' eyes, witnessing them reach the epiphany that if they were as gifted as me (read: entirely average student, but fast test-taker), they too could be finished by now instead of re-wording their answer to the open-ended question about the Pullman Strike. Suckers.

The reward for finishing first was always the same, particularly in Junior High and below. "Go put your head down on your desk."

These days, my job is very hot and cold. I still work fast, but there are days where I can't catch up, like yesterday, and others, like today, where I am wishing that someone would stroll toward my cube and instruct me to put my head down on my desk.