My palms clam up as I sit down in my 11 a.m. My fellow classmates are preying on my downfall. I can feel it. 

I can already hear the slew of “I would like to piggyback off of that” ringing in my eardrums, and a slight headache begins to form from the PTSD. 

It took everything in me to attend this class, but considering we only have two excused absences, it was suffer or fail, and suffering won today. 

We sit in a circle like the count-off in “The Hunger Games,” making unavoidable eye-contact. I scope out the usual suspects: the uninterested athlete; the freshman who still has light in their eyes; the Montessori smart-ass adjusting his tortoiseshell glasses as he scrawls something in his Moleskine; and the girl with the intentionally bad haircut, who flips through her overwhelmingly annotated book. 

I’m underprepared to face this battle. 

I never had the chance to learn anyone’s names because I was too busy rehearsing my own name, major, and pronouns while we went around to introduce ourselves on the first day, so these descriptions will have to last me through the rest of the semester. 

With every question, a mental clock ticks as I scour my brain for an impressive response, but the millisecond my hand levitates off the desk, Mr. Montessori interjects with a PhD level analysis. Even the athlete had a few good contributions. 

I need to say something. Anything. All I’ve said today was “Here,” during attendance. 

“Olivia, do you have anything you want to say? I don’t think we’ve heard from you yet,” bad haircut suggests with a condescending smirk.

My stomach plummets, and I’m blanking. “Uh…” I flip through my copy of the text, begging for salvation. I’m not even entirely sure what we were talking about. Metaphors? Imagery?

“That’s ok,” the professor interrupts. “We’re nearly out of time anyway.”

I leave the class feeling my biweekly dose of humility, and I’ll wake up in cold sweats about these moments for the rest of my life.