Lost days club

II.Tomas

Tomás Rivas knew the answer to question sixteen. The differential equation sprawled across his exam paper like a challenge, but the solution hovered in his mind with perfect clarity—eigenvalues and boundary conditions arranging themselves into elegant patterns only he could see. His pencil hovered a millimeter above the page, trembling slightly. Around him, the scratch of graphite on paper filled the room as thirty other engineering students worked through the problems with furrowed brows and hunched shoulders. Tomás sat unnaturally still, his broad shoulders rigid, his breathing shallow. The clock on the wall ticked past the halfway mark, and still, he did not write.

The problem was elegant in its complexity: a partial differential equation modeling heat transfer through a non-uniform medium. He could visualize the solution, could see the mathematical beauty in the approach needed. Two years ago, he would have attacked it with confidence, his hand moving across the page with certainty and even joy.

Now, a familiar paralysis gripped him. What if his approach contained a fundamental error? What if he made a careless computational mistake? What if his solution was merely adequate when brilliance was expected?

Better not to try at all than to try and reveal mediocrity.

His dark eyes flicked to his neighbor's paper. Elena Santiago worked with focused intensity, her equations marching across the page in orderly rows. She would earn her usual A, not through exceptional insight but through consistent, methodical effort. Tomás envied her uncomplicated relationship with achievement.

"Twenty minutes remaining," Professor Alvarez announced from the front of the room.

Tomás wrote partial solutions to the simpler problems, deliberately leaving gaps in his work. For question sixteen, he jotted only the initial setup, then abandoned it mid-calculation. He knew the disappointment his paper would generate, knew it would further damage his once-promising academic record. This knowledge settled in his chest like a stone, yet still he could not force himself to complete the work.

When the exam ended, he handed in his paper with a strange sense of relief. Another opportunity for excellence successfully avoided. Another defense against the possibility of giving his all and discovering it wasn't enough.

"Tomás, could I speak with you?" Professor Alvarez's voice cut through his thoughts as the other students filed out of the classroom.

He approached the professor's desk with the careful movements of someone approaching a precipice. Professor Alvarez was in his fifties, with silver-streaked hair and the pragmatic demeanor of someone who had spent decades translating theoretical concepts into practical applications.

"I'd like to discuss your recent performance," Alvarez said, gesturing to a nearby chair.

Tomás sat, his thumb unconsciously rubbing along the seam of his notebook, a nervous habit he'd developed in recent months. "I've been busy with other courses," he offered preemptively.

"Interesting," Alvarez said, removing his glasses. "Because when you came to my office hours last week, you solved a problem in minutes that had stumped our graduate students. You explained a complex concept so clearly that I'm considering using your approach in my next paper." He tapped Tomás's exam. "Yet here, you've submitted work that doesn't reflect even a fraction of your understanding."

Tomás looked away, unable to meet the concern in his professor's eyes. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, their steady drone matching the anxiety pulsing through his body.

"This isn't the first time," Alvarez continued. "Your coursework demonstrates exceptional insight, but your formal assessments show a student barely passing. It's as if you become a different person when evaluation is at stake."

"I just... blank out sometimes," Tomás lied, the words bitter on his tongue.

"No," Alvarez said gently but firmly. "I don't believe that's what's happening. I think you're deliberately underperforming. The question is why."

Tomás remained silent, his gaze fixed on the mathematical formulas scrawled on the whiteboard behind the professor. Equations were reliable; they followed logical rules. Human expectations were messier, less predictable.

"You were the department's most promising student when you arrived," Alvarez said. "But if this pattern continues, I won't be able to protect you from academic probation. Think about what you want, Tomás. Not what you think others want from you."

The conversation ended with vague assurances from Tomás that he would try harder, words that rang hollow to both men. He left the building with his shoulders hunched against a non-existent chill, the spring sunshine incongruous with his inner darkness.

The campus hummed with afternoon activity. Students lounged on benches, laptops balanced on knees, cups of coffee in hand. They moved through the space with purpose or leisure, all seemingly comfortable in their skins in a way that felt foreign to Tomás. He walked slowly, deliberately, each step measured as if he might forget how to perform even this basic function.

Near the communications building, a small crowd had gathered. At its center stood Luna Serrano, her phone mounted on a sleek tripod as she filmed herself discussing the university's upcoming cultural festival. Tomás paused, watching from a distance.

Luna spoke with animated confidence, her gestures precise and her smile calibrated for maximum engagement. She wore her social media persona like a perfectly tailored garment, seeming effortlessly at ease in her public performance. When she laughed, the sound carried across the quad, drawing more students toward her magnetic field.

How simple it must be, Tomás thought, to move through the world with such certainty. To know exactly who you were and what you were meant to do. To perform without the crushing weight of potential failure.

What he couldn't see, from his vantage point of envy, were the calculations behind Luna's casual demeanor—the practiced angles, the rehearsed spontaneity, the metric-driven anxiety that mirrored his own in ways neither could recognize.

Tomás's apartment sat on the third floor of a utilitarian building six blocks from campus. The space was sparse—a couch, a desk, a bed—all secondary to the true focal point: three large whiteboards covered in mathematical equations. Complex formulas sprawled across the white surfaces in Tomás's precise handwriting, explorations of theoretical problems that had nothing to do with his coursework. Here, in the privacy of his own space, his brilliance was allowed expression without the terror of evaluation.

He dropped his backpack by the door and moved to the kitchen, where he mechanically filled a glass with water and drank it standing by the sink. The apartment was silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sounds of his neighbors' lives filtering through thin walls.

His laptop sat on the desk, and when he opened it, the email was already waiting. The subject line—"Notice of Academic Probation"—sent a jolt of adrenaline through his body despite its inevitability.

Tomás,

Due to your continued underperformance in core engineering courses, the department has placed you on academic probation effective immediately. To maintain your enrollment status, you must:

1) Achieve a minimum GPA of 3.0 this semester

2) Complete 15 hours of community service through the university's Restoration Program

3) Meet weekly with your academic advisor

Please contact the Student Services office by Friday to arrange your community service assignment.

The words blurred as his breathing quickened, his chest tightening with familiar pressure. The room seemed to shrink around him, the equations on his whiteboards suddenly menacing in their complexity. He pressed his palms against his desk, focusing on the solid feeling of wood against skin as he tried to control his spiraling thoughts.

The community service would eat into his study time. The weekly meetings would mean more scrutiny, more opportunities to disappoint. The GPA requirement meant he would actually need to perform at the level he was capable of—a prospect more terrifying than failure.

His gaze fell on the withdrawal form he'd downloaded weeks ago but never submitted. It would be simple to fill it out now, to walk away before the inevitable collapse. To give up the dream of becoming an engineer before it officially became a nightmare of inadequacy.

His hands trembled as he reached for the form, but his phone buzzed with a text from his mother: "How did your exam go today, mijo? Your father and I are so proud."

Tomás stared at the message, his throat tight. They had no idea how close he was to throwing away everything—their sacrifices, his potential, the identity he'd constructed around his mathematical abilities. They still saw him as the brilliant child who had once solved equations for fun, who had never known the paralyzing fear of failing to meet his own impossible standards.

He set the withdrawal form aside, not completed but not discarded either, and began to compose a response to the probation notice. He would do the community service. He would attend the meetings. He would continue the exhausting performance of academia while the possibility of escape remained within reach, tucked in his desk drawer like a lifeline.