Musings From a Stubby Pencil

“I hate exams.” “I know,” my brain replies, with the dwindling patience of something that has long since stopped trying to fix me. “I really hate exams.” “Noted. Logged. Buried with the rest” I’m sitting in a cavernous exam hall that smells faintly of dust, dread, and forgotten ambition — a mausoleum where confidence comes to die quietly in rows. The desks stretch out in neat, obedient lines, each one a tiny coffin for withering dreams. A single paper sits before me — pristine, patient, quietly vindictive. Blank on the outside. Scheming maliciously within. Above me, the clock looms — round, smug, and ticking far too loudly for something that doesn’t even have lungs, as if it feeds on the panic it creates and grows fat on it. Tick. Tick. Tick. “Oh, shut the fuck up,” I mutter. It doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t. This is its moment of glory. “You may begin your papers now.” The voice slices through the room like chalk screeching across a board — sharp, vicious, and deeply discomforting. I look up. There she stands. Arms folded. Glasses perched halfway down her nose like she’s judging not just my intelligence, but conducting a full post-mortem on my potential. Shoes polished. Spine rigid. Soul… conspicuously absent. Jesus wept. My hands have already turned to jelly. Not wobble-wobble dessert jelly. No — the kind that has been left out in the heat too long, sagging in on itself, quietly forgetting its purpose. “Open it,” my brain says. “I don’t want to.” “Do it.” “I will, but I reserve the right to resent every second of it.” I peel the paper open like it might explode, like knowledge itself is volatile and I’ve been trusted with it in error. Route planning. Of course it is. Of all the things my brain refuses to do… it’s this. Always this.vConsistently, almost impressively, this. I glance sideways. Zusanna. Young Zusanna. Work Zusanna. Almost half my age and twice as capable. Effortlessly… with it. The kind of person who has her life firmly held together, colour-coded, labelled, and probably backed up on multiple hard drives. Her pencil is already moving. Whispering in neat, controlled, quietly smug scratches. Mocking me. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. I want to shove that pencil up her nose. The blunt end, obviously. I’m not a psychopath. Just slightly… unhinged. Shit. The words on my page begin to shift, sliding about like they’ve been spilled in oil. Letters drift, rearrange, refuse to commit to meaning. “My brain,” I whisper, “has left the building.” “I wish I’d gone sooner,” my brain replies. Route planning. Right. Simple. Except… I need a ruler. Do I have a ruler? Of course I don’t have a ruler. Why would I have a ruler? That would suggest foresight. Preparation. A functioning adult presence. I look down at my equipment. A single pencil. Stubby. Blunt. A shadow of its former self, a relic of sharper days. One wrong move away from disintegration, like it too is one inconvenience away from total surrender. I don’t even have a rubber. Not a scrap of forgiveness in sight — no erasing, only failure. A hand appears. Graceful. Calm. Zuzanna. She slides a ruler onto my desk like a benevolent goddess of stationery and gives me a small smile. “Oh—thank you,” I whisper. “No problem,” she says softly, already three steps ahead in life and at least six in this exam. Her pencil case sits open. It’s… magnificent. Pens. Highlighters. Precision tools I’ve never even seen before — an arsenal curated by foresight and a deeply disturbing passion for preparedness. There’s probably a protractor in there that could accurately measure the angle of my decline. Mine? I have a stubby pencil and a deteriorating sense of self. I try to focus. I really do. But the lines I draw slither and sag across the page as if my bones have jellified too. Zusanna’s? Architectural. Elegant. Confident. Lines that know where they’re going — and intend to arrive. At some point, she slides her paper slightly towards me. An angel. A terrifyingly competent angel. I copy. Of course I copy. Not perfectly — because even cheating, I somehow manage to underperform — but convincingly enough to maintain the fragile illusion that I’m not seconds away from academic annihilation. The invigilator begins pacing. Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop. Each step lands directly on my last nerve, grinding into something thin and frayed. “Could you not?” I mutter under my breath. She pauses. Looks at me. Clears her throat. Ah. So she can hear. Blood marvellous. “Next section.” I turn the page. Design a board game… around a paper mouse. I stare at it. The mouse stares back. We understand each other — two poorly prepared participants trapped in a system that expects competence we simply do not possess. Neither of us belong here. Zuzanna is already building something. Of course she is. Not just building. Constructing. Engineering. Thriving, frankly. Her creation rises from the desk like a small, intricate monument to competence — levers, tracks, structure, purpose — a fully realised thought made physical. Meanwhile, I am holding a paper mouse and considering violence. “If I just… flatten it,” I whisper, pressing it slightly, “we could both leave.” “Just crush it already,” my brain baits. I glance at her again. She doesn’t rush. She doesn’t panic. She just… does. As if life is something she’s already figured out and is merely executing with quiet, infuriating efficiency. She once showed me her artwork. Horses. Painted for a book. They weren’t just good — they were achingly, offensively alive. Muscles beneath painted skin, movement caught mid-breath, eyes that looked straight through you and disapproved. The kind of talent that makes you briefly consider retiring from creativity altogether and taking up something safer. Like breathing. “She can do everything,” I mutter. “And you can spiral impressively,” my brain adds. “She even posts better than me,” I whisper. “Anyone with thumbs can post better than you,” my brain says, encouragingly. I look down at my mouse again. The clock ticks louder. Tick. Tick. Tick. “Right,” I say suddenly — too loudly. “You can do this.” The room stills. The invigilator clears her throat again. Ah. Inside voice — a concept I continue to approach but never fully grasp. And then — somehow — it comes to me. “Mousetrap.” A relic of childhood. A game I both adored and despised — equal parts joy and prolonged suffering. Hours to assemble. Seconds to enjoy. An absolute bastard to dismantle. A perfect metaphor, really. I get to work. Paper crumpled into tight balls. Bars formed. Structure emerging. Something resembling intent begins to take shape. It’s not elegant. It’s not clever. But it’s… something. For once, my brain shows up. Late. Dishevelled. Slightly out of breath, but present. “I’m doing it,” I whisper. “Yeah… you keep telling yourself that,” my brain adds. And then— “You can put down your pens.” No. No, no, no. I’m halfway through. Halfway. Zuzanna’s already finished. Of course she is. Her pen rests neatly beside her masterpiece. She looks serene. At peace. Untouched by the quiet violence of comparison. Probably already mentally onto her next success. I look at my creation. Half a trap. Half an idea. Half a chance. “Fuck it,” I say softly. “Finally,” my brain says. I drop my pencil. Or what remains of it. A worn-down stub. Barely there. Charcoal clinging to existence. Functional, but only just. Much like me. And as I sit there — empty-handed, unfinished, undeniably average — something shifts. Not the paper this time. Me. Because what does it actually matter? This exam. This moment. This relentless measuring of myself against someone else’s effortless brilliance. What does it prove? That she is capable? Yes. That I am not? No. I pick up the pencil again and turn it between my fingers. Small. Blunt. Used. But still… writing. Maybe I am like this pencil. Worn down. A bit scrappy. Frequently on the verge of collapse. But still leaving a mark. Still showing up. Still dragging something legible out of chaos — even when the point has all but gone. The clock keeps ticking. Of course it does. It always will. But for once, it doesn’t sound like doom. Just… time passing. And me — imperfect, unfinished, slightly ridiculous — passing through it. Still here. Still trying. Still… enough.