Making the Grade

Tonight my dream had me walking down the length of a very long building which seemed to stretch on forever. 

With me was a group of about ten or so people that looked about my age; one of them had a bike. Nobody really said anything, and soon we came upon a door that we stood around. One at a time, the students went inside and went up the flight of stairs that landed next to the door. Each one would come out after a minute or so and declare a grade. I don’t remember many of them, but the highest was a 94 and the lowest was something like 86. Eventually it was my turn, so I went up. 

The building looked and sounded like it was totally empty, but at the top of the stairs I could see that one classroom was open. In it was a large group of students, each one of them writing studiously into notebooks or onto loose-leaf papers. A man was sitting at the desk at the front of the room, reading a book. He hardly seemed to notice me come in. As I walked up to him, the teacher set down his book and said just one thing to me.

“What are you willing to give up to make the grade?”

Without really thinking about it I said that I would give up my drawing talent (of which I have little to start with).

He picked up a pen and jotted this down onto a ledger and said to me, “You get a 97. Come back on the next X.” This confused me, but he wouldn’t elaborate about what, when, or where the next X was. Leaving the classroom I noticed that the building was now full of people. I slid down the stairs and almost knocked a few people over on my ride down and went back outside where the group of students was waiting. Upon hearing my grade they slowly started to clap.