Dramatis persona:
Gary King, a male mathematics instructor in his 50s, with the usual stereotypes and mannerisms associated with a male mathematics instructor
The setting is irrelevant.
GARY: I had a dream in which I was giving a quiz to one of my classes. The class was algebra, which is odd because algebra is a course I haven’t taught for some time. After handing out the quiz and returning to my desk, almost immediately one of the students got up and brought me his quiz. The student said, “This is what it’s like when you’re stupid.” I took the quiz and looked at it. All that the student had written was the number 44 under the first equation (the answer was, of course, incorrect, though I can’t remember what exactly the equation was now). The space for the student's name was left blank. I looked back up over the paper, which I held between my thumb and the side of my index finger at the bottom right-hand corner, bending the page slightly into the crook of my index finger so that it stood straight before my eyes, to tell the student that he had forgotten to write his name down but it was already too late. The student ran toward an open window in the back of the class and jumped. The significance of this act did not escape me, for in my dream I knew that our classroom was on the highest floor of the building, and that the student was leaping to his certain death. And I looked again at his quiz and thought to myself, He is right. This is what it's like when you're stupid. Then I woke up.
