Honesty

Honesty
It was one of those rare moments when the Mathematics exam had caused me to perspire profusely. My palms were soaking wet and my attempts to dry them on my shirt was to no avail; for on my shirt itself I noticed a dark patch of moisture forming. The mathematical equations had grown increasingly complex and difficult and they failed to invoke any solutions in my exhausted brain. I had to make a decision in the next thirty minutes. I looked around and the others seemed to be having a worse time. My last chance to redeem a distinction for the year in Maths was at stake. I was to loose twenty marks, for the last two questions. There was barely enough time to complete it. Just then I felt a bulb light up above me. I flipped the question paper to the first page and began working.

Weeks of uninterrupted yet strenuous gaming and movie marathons had passed quickly. I was to receive my marks for mathematics and it was the paper I was most enthusiastic and eager about. I recalled engineering my solutions to such precision in the last thirty minutes that it was synonymous to an impregnable fortress guarded by a moat with crocodiles, followed by a row of archers and lastly an abundance of cannons pointing in every direction. The possibility of my teacher squeezing a single mark out of the gambled eighty marks I had answered I had answered was almost zero.

I sat at my table and could easily hear my heart beat exponentially increasing in frequency and loudness. My weeks of practice and hard work were to gather the force of triumph or defeat; the latter having a considerably lower possibility. It was not long before the teacher arrived and gave me an unusually broad smile. I later realized that I was the only one in the class who had the privilege of bearing a distinction in that dreaded subject.

When I received my paper, I thanked all the gods I had known, for the marks had been rounded up from 74.5 to 75, getting me the well sought after A-1. Flippantly, I began searching the paper for any mistakes in addiction or marking which would comfortably push me forward releasing me from the threshold of the distinction mark. Just then, I made the mistake of turning to the last page of answers. There right before my teary eyes stood something, screaming for attention.

Quickly I pushed it away, securing its detection from an inquisitive eye or a piqued loud mouth. However, no matter how much I tried to shove he thought away, the predicament succeeded in putting me in the wrong. In the commotion of the rest of the class, I could easily avoided detection; but was that what I deserved? It was not fair. I turned to the last page again.

It wasn’t long, before I gathered courage and stood up walking towards the teacher. ‘I was doing the right thing’, I told myself for the last time – and even as I left my chair my mind scurried for a reason to justify that the square root of thirty six was eighteen.