Cal’s mother seemed to think that every school year should end with an essay written to her that described and discussed what they’d learned in school this year. Okay, so it wasn’t that she “seemed” to think this, it’s that she did think this and she applied it to both of her children without mercy. It was a drag, but it was something that Cal had learned to expect ever since she’d been a freshling (those halcyon days, back when essays could just be one page long in point twenty-four font!). It was something she could normally ignore until the end of the school year, when she spent a weekend complaining about it before knuckling down to write it on the last day of school. That was the deadline—she had to turn it in by the last day of school, or she’d start getting privileges taken away.Procrastination was normally the order of the day when it came to the Great Extra-Curricular Reflective Essay, as Histeol had taken to calling it. He tended to procrastinate on it much less, though. Cal chalked this up to the fact that nothing Teo could type with his braille writer was readable by either Cal or their mother, so Teo’s assignment was an oral report. Admittedly, an oral report could be more honerous than an essay under normal circumstances, but this wasn’t normal circumstances, this was talking to your mom and sister, something you did every day at meals. So personally, Cal felt like she got the short end of the stick when it came to this assignment.
Cal sat in front of the computer, trying to figure out what to say. They only owned one computer in their family, and it pulled duty as Mom’s work computer (with all of her emails and contact information for her customers, as well as breeding spreadsheets) as well as Cal’s homework computer. Even Teo used it. In recognition of Cal’s essay assignment—and as a reward for the fact that she was tackling this on the weekend before the last day of school instead of after school on the last day—Cal had the computer all to herself in the tiny computer room. The fan was blowing cool air onto her face and onto the computer as she tried to think about this year. Where to begin?
This year started off well, with new classes in herbalism and care of magical creatures, she began. She made a face. She took those electives every year. Herbalism because it interested her, and care of magical creatures because, well…well, because Eidil took that class, and she wanted to spend time with Eidil. Thinking of her Demon friend, inspiration struck.
However, in early October, things started to change for me. I took a personality quiz with Eidil. I am not normally the personality quiz type, due to my skeptical nature as a scientist, but I have to admit that this quiz had my personality nailed down to a tee. It described me as a hard-working but impatient individual. It also gave me some advice: it told me that I needed to think like a tree that slowly grows towards the light. I was skeptical of this, too, at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it stuck in my head.
I started wearing a necklace with an acorn on it to remind me to think like a tree. Every time I found myself getting upset at the rest of the world, I told myself to be calm and to be patient. I told myself not to rush, to grow slowly so that I could grow strong. The quiz also told me that I was intolerant of other people’s interests if they did not match mine. It did not provide a very good solution to that problem, but I found that thinking like a tree actually helped me there, too. I began to think of other people as different types of trees. Different trees have different ancestries and different environments, so they all have to grow differently to reach the same effect. In the end, we are all reaching towards the light.
I have not reached the light yet. Next year I will begin my senior years at the Academy, and I will be the first to admit that I am not yet as patient as I should be. I still get short with people and I still get frustrated. I still struggle to understand other people’s perspectives, but I think I am getting better at controlling these impulses. I do not normally get the opportunity to say this in my end-of-the-year essays, but I think I have improved as a person this year, even if it’s only by a little bit. Next year I will keep working hard to think like a tree.
Another important change this year was that I started dating Eidil…
