I walked out into the April sunshine. The campus courtyard was empty. The air was perfectly still.
I looked down at the blank space beneath the question. Define ‘understanding’…
Dr. Stevens collected the papers in silence. As he passed my desk, he paused. He looked down at my page, read the final line, and his mouth did something I had never seen in four years. dr. stevens' final examination
To my right, Julian was staring at the ceiling, his pen untouched. He was the poet. He would likely spiral into a beautiful, useless argument about love or loss.
“Watch her,” he said.
When I walked into his office, he was holding my exam. He handed it to me. At the bottom, beneath my final sentence, he had written in red ink:
I set down my pen. There were five minutes left. I did not proofread. I walked out into the April sunshine
“Dr. Stevens,” I’d asked, “how do I know I’m not just a machine? If my thoughts are just chemical reactions, if my choices are just the sum of my inputs… what’s the difference?”