The Other Side Of The Hill

Chapter-5

The clock read 8:30. It was the first period and all the students waited for their Maths teacher to arrive. They had to submit their mid-term assignments. June had already completed hers weeks ago but due to some irresponsible students who were always up to one thing or the other the entire term were delaying in submission and for a handful students the entire class had to wait for so long. It was 8:35 then and the door of the class opened and the Maths teacher entered. The students stood up from their seats and those at the back who were still busy in completing their assignment didn’t notice the teacher stand before the class.
“Good morning, class. Please take your seats. I suppose you are to submit your assignments today. All the other sections had already submitted a week ago. You are the only one left.”
The backbenchers weren’t aware still. The teacher noticed the ignorance and proceeded towards them. Still no movement of their body, only their eyes stayed glued to the pages they were decorating.
The teacher cleared his throat. “How is it going, students? Still more to do?” The girls lifted their heads are let out a gasp. The other one behind her stared wide eyed and nudged the one beside her. “Good morning, sir. We didn’t notice you…were…here…we are almost done. We’ll submit it before the period gets over.” The teacher gave a disapproving look before he said that it was the last chance they had and no more submissions would be accepted after the class was dismissed. Saying that he turned away and walked toward his table. On the blackboard he wrote an equation. June figured it out to be one from the Quadratic equations. She was practising quadratic equations at that time. She found herself doing better at it then she did before. In eighth grade, when was first introduced to algebra, she did fine. She was improving but the next year it wasn’t the same. She found herself struggling at certain points. Maybe she was over confident that algebra was her thing and she was already an expert at it. She read the question and it was pretty simple. She completed it before anyone could and informed the teacher that it was done. He asked her to do the sum on the board for everyone to look at. The teacher verified the solution and she proceeded to do it.
The bell rang and the class was to be dismissed but before that the class monitor along with the assistant collected all the assignments. Some students couldn’t hold the burden any longer and felt relieved as they handed it over while another section featured students who didn’t wish to part with it and unfortunately June and Mayra had to snatch them away. June found it weird. They followed the teacher to his staff room where they would keep the assignments. The next period was Science. The teacher was as punctual as always. She came in as soon as the previous teacher left. June and Mayra were at the staff room so they were late by three minutes. The teacher didn’t like it although she couldn’t express it since they were doing their job too. The topic they would read that day was on “Magnetism”. They students flipped their pages and found the page number 101 that they were supposed to read from. June didn’t like science much. She was more drawn towards social science. She did figure out what the topics were and what they said. She got good grades at it but still she wasn’t quick enough to catch the theory as most of her friends did. Never had she ever heard any of her friends speak about taking social science in the higher classes. They were all taking biology, chemistry or physics whether they liked it or not.  Growing up June too thought the same way. In the early days, people believed that good students and toppers took science while the average or low graders took up humanities which seemed unfair to June. Both her parents took science in their school but never did they work any jobs relating to it. They were up with business. Richard said that when he was attending school he too opted for science but later changed his mind because it seemed too much for him to concentrate at. He often comments that he was never a hard-core science addict and that his decision then was influenced by his parents.

The lesson proceeds and June underlined the lines she found important. The teacher explained about the Left hand rule that Fleming had invented. She found it quiet amazing out of what she had studied in the previous part of the lesson. Later on the teacher went on to explain an experiment to clarify the rule further. It was only then that the bell rang again and she declared that they would be going to the lab the next class. The students stood up as the teacher left the classroom. It was their Social science class then and June couldn’t be any happier. The lesson went on for another forty-five minutes and no one seemed more interested throughout the lesson then June. Finally when the period ended and the bell rang, the teacher dismissed the class and went out. The students rushed out without wasting any minute.