"Anyone know the answer?" Professor Kellet asked. Silence. Figures, no one ever seemed to pay attention during calculus. Reluctantly, I looked down at my paper and raised my hand.
Relieved, Professor Kellet immediately called on me, "Yes, Miss Terada?"
"Y equals the square root of 2 divided by 7," I answered.
"Good, good, very good. Can someone else explain Miss Terada's reasoning?" The Professor scanned the room expectantly. I sighed inwardly, knowing that the professor wouldn't get a single person. I admired his persistence, but I think he knew as much as I did that it was a lost cause.
"Anyone? Anyone at all?"
I fidgeted in my seat, waiting again for the moment when Professor Kellet calmly accepted that he wouldn't get any replies this time, nor any other. The moment came.
"Alright then, as we have no volunteers, what do you have to say, Mr Hamada?" The Professor turned him, as he always did. The cocky, black haired boy in the back of the room always had the answer, but he never bothered to speak up. A kid genius in the senior AP calculus course, and he didn't even do the homework half the time. I think he just liked to see Professor Kellet squirm. Personally, I loathed Hiro Hamada with all my heart, but I'll get to that later. Here we go again, I thought.
"Well, Professor," Hiro started, leaning back in his chair, "From the original problem, the conclusion Y equals the square root of 2 over 7 is fairly easy to reach once you realize that most of the components can be factored and simplified to whole numbers, not the radicals, cubes, and squares that they are originally written as. For instance, this radical here..." Hiro went on to thoroughly examine the entire process, even going as far as to take my paper from my desk and use it as a visual aid, pointing out irrelevant information as well as some more efficient methods he used to obtain the same result. The kid didn't ever volunteer, but when he was called on, he made sure it was blatantly obvious that he knew way more than we did.
"Th-Thank you Mr Hamada, that was very... insightful." Professor Kellet said hesitantly. The Professor used to teach at SFIT, but he left in order to teach high school students when he realized how little the incoming college freshmen knew. When we came into his class this year, he asked that we address him as "Professor" even though we weren't in a college setting. As one of the few students who cared about class, we got to talk quite often. I was a 14 year old girl in a class of 17 year old seniors, I was ready to take all the help I could get.
He told me that he came into Sanfransokyo High hoping to get a group of motivated, eager students. This was where I pitied him, because what he got was a class of twenty two apathetic 17 year-olds, plus a 14 year-old girl who's feet could barely touch the floor from her chair and a 13 year-old boy genius who was bored out of his mind.
Theatrics finished, Hiro once again shut out the rest of the class, indifferent to everything around him. He hunched over his "notes" and proceeded to draw... what was that, a robot? I rolled my eyes. Let him waste his potential if he wants too.
It just, irked me how Hiro was blessed with so much knowledge and talent yet didn't bother to do anything with it. Sure, he was graduating high school at 13 years old, but in the process, he was arrogant, indifferent, and lazy too. I don't even think he was planning on going to college. Rumor had it that he was going bot fighting in his free time. Great, a criminal genius. I didn't know anyone else who could do what he could, but I knew that if I had his smarts, I would be out getting my degree and starting right away at an engineering lab. Maybe even a KreiTech, if I got the chance.
"Thank you, class. I will see you all tomorrow," Professor Kellet's voice shook me out of my daydreaming. Class is over already? Wow, time flies when you're zoning out. I had taken a summer calculus class, so this lesson had been a bit of a review. I guess I had allowed my mind to drift after Hiro's "explanation."
Half the class had already hurriedly filtered out of the room, and I was one of the last few left. Looking around, I stood up, thanked the Professor, slipped my backpack over my shoulder, and walked out of the room.
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Hi guys! This was going to be a one shot, but now I'm not too sure, and I'm just all around indecisive. Should I keep writing, or just end it here? Please comment and tell me what you think!