Walking into my Latin 2.5 test on Wednesday, I was truly in for a big surprise.
I had spent the weekend and days previous preparing for the last major commitment of the term, and I was expecting the worst. I toiled over flashcards with independent uses of the subjunctive, translated any and every conditional sentence that I could find, and binge-watched Youtube videos explaining how to differentiate between the optative and potential uses. And yet walking into the classroom, after what felt like a year of studying, anxiety still coursed through my veins. The clock struck 12:40, the test had begun.
As I worked my way through the dizzying multiple choice section, the harmonious scritch of pencils was suddenly interrupted by belligerent buzzing. I looked up, hearing a scream from one of my classmates across the room. It was the wasp. For the past few weeks, my class has been tormented by these flying demons. It started with just one, who would orbit the light fixtures on the high ceilings of the classroom, maintaining a safe distance from the threat of us humans who lie below. However recently, they have multiplied and even worse, they seem to have overcome their fear of us. Regularly, an oral translation will abruptly end in running and screaming. Usually Mr. G, my Latin teacher, would roll his eyes and scoff at our melodrama, but this was where he drew the line. “Alright, everybody out,” he declared, ushering us up from our seats. He marched from classroom to classroom in the language wing, lamenting about our wasp troubles and vowing to fix them. Finally finding an empty room, we hustled to take our seats and complete our tests. As the clock drew near the end of the period, Mr. G realized that the wasp distraction had taken up too much time, and he begrudgingly agreed to extend the test into the following day.