Three More Hours

Three More Hours

Two Trig worksheets, a lab report, revise a six page essay, a Spanish presentation, finish the article for the newspaper, and ten pages of reading plus notes for USHAP, all finished by 2:30 AM, hopefully, Elizabeth thought as she set her bag on the floor next to her desk chair and yawned. Having just gotten home from the five hour shift she works at a neighborhood restaurant after a full day of school, she was just starting her schoolwork at 8:30. She rubbed her eyes as she pulled out her dented Macbook Air. She opened the silver lid and pulled up her first assignment, a lab report from her AP Biology class, and started to type the results from last week’s lab. When she  finished, she looked at the clock. It read 9:27, and she still had three other classes worth of homework to complete, along with the beginning of her application to NYU. Elizabeth sighed but thought, Do it for college. After graduation, this will all have been worth it.

It was a mantra she had ingrained into what space was left of her crowded, overused brain. The hard work she had been doing every day since the first day of freshman year three years ago had begun to catch up with her. The countless volunteer hours at the animal shelter, the seven period schedules, and the hundreds of hours logged in at the restaurant. They would all be worth something once she received the one word she had been working toward for her entire teenage existence: accepted. All that really mattered to Elizabeth at the present was her future. And she was dead set on believing that her future consisted of four years of  advanced learning at NYU. She reminded herself of this once more as she shakily began taking notes for her AP US History reading. As she continued to type, her heart began to pound faster and faster. This was taking so much more time than she anticipated. It was already ten o’clock and she wasn’t even half way through the notes. She wouldn’t have enough time for the piles of other homework she had queued up on the desk next to her right shoulder.

“Just three more hours of this and you can go to bed. That’s really not such a long time” she whispered to herself between shortened breaths and the nervous taps of her feet against the hardwood floor.

Elizabeth stopped. She looked at her screen and she could not make out one word from another. Her eyes were blurry and as she touched her pale skin, she felt her fingertips grow damp.

“Wh-what? Why am I crying? I can do this! I can finish my homework, I’ve had more before! I can-”

Her hurried whispers were interrupted by the glistening tears now running down her face in a steady stream.

“I can’t do this.” Elizabeth said quietly. “I can’t do this! I’m never going to go to college. I can’t do this!” she was now screaming. She heard footsteps down the hall, thumping across the hardwood floor in her direction.

Elizabeth’s mother opened the door and said in an apprehensive voice, “Elizabeth, honey? Everything okay?”

Elizabeth spun her desk chair slowly to face her worried mother. “I – can’t–do–this.”

Her mother ran up to Elizabeth and grabbed her gently, pulling her away from the desk and towards the comfort of her bed.

Elizabeth sat down and buried her damp face in her trembling hands, gasping for air between sobs.

“Elizabeth, honey,” said her mother kindly, “I need you to just take a minute. Just take a minute and stop thinking about everything. Empty your mind of everything: college applications, extracurriculars, your job, your friends. Everything except for me, okay? Focus. On. Me.” Elizabeth removed her face from her hands. “Look at me. Your father and I are so proud of you. You are brilliant and driven, and I can promise you, with all my heart, that you will get into a good college. You will be successful. And you will be happy. Regardless of how many extracurriculars you have. Regardless of how you compare to the next applicant. Because guess what? None of that matters, as long as you are happy. And if you aren’t happy right now, then you need to remember that your path is not already laid out for you. You have the power to change your course anytime you want. Okay?”

Elizabeth had stopped crying. She looked at her mother through her glassy, tear filled, brown eyes, and nodded. Her mother smiled lightly and kissed Elizabeth’s forehead as she got up to leave.

“I love you Elizabeth. And I am so proud of you, regardless of how you choose to go about your future.”

Elizabeth smiled and said, “I love you too Mom. Thanks. For everything.”

“Of course,” whispered her mom.

As soon as Elizabeth’s door was shut, Elizabeth quickly ran back to her desk. Wiping the last tears from under her eyes, she reopened her laptop and slowly began to type again as she whispered to herself, “Only three more hours.”