As a Clock

                    As a Clock
      
      It gets quite boring sitting up here all day. I watch as "students", as many of the humans are called here, yawn and ineptly do their work. Sh, sh, sh go the pencils as they get smaller and smaller, scratching against the paper. The humming and grinding of sharpeners could be heard repeatedly through the class. Sometimes a student will walk through Mr. Door, causing an unpleasant squeaking sound.
       The "teacher" tells the students to take out paper, making the majority of the class groan and complain. They grab their bags digging around for notebooks then ripping out paper. It was quiet as they wrote page after page, so quite you could hear  my ticking, almost as if I were teasing them. " It must be so tedious", I laugh to myself, "to have to sit there for several hours, doing nothing but make your hand hurt."
      Sometimes, they look at me longingly, as if telling me , "if you go faster, I'll love you forever." But I just tick on, at my normal pace, neither caring  nor being able to fulfill their request.
      There's a loud "Beeeeep" which causes the students to smile, stand, stretch, picking up their belongings, and eagerly leave the classroom. They walk out Mr. Door as fast as their feet can travel, not even stopping to say good bye to the teacher. The teacher sighs and walks to Ms. Computer, typing so many words per minute.
      A little while later, more students slowly and randomly walking through Mr. Door, chatting and arguing away. Soon after the students are in the room, there's another "Beeeeeep" and they sit down. A few students hurry in, now late and being marked tardy by the teacher.
      "Good morning! Happy Wednesday," the teacher says cheerily to her class. "Morning," say only a few students, most of them doing so sarcastically. The teacher, ignoring the sound of sarcasm, announces that there is a "vocab quiz" today. The class complains and goes on about how unfair it is. As they continue they're complaining, the teacher stands there, saying nothing. The look on her face is very unpleasant, telling some of the students that were looking at her ,"if you don't settle down in 30 seconds, there'll be even more work for you to complain about." The students quickly tell each other to "shut up", then the room was silent for the first time that class.
      The students, quiet now, did their quiz. I noticed several times that they passed notes, saying things like "#7" and replies such as "connoisseur".
       They glare up at me and I dauntlessly stare back, tick, tick, ticking on. I'm quite used to people looking at me, as obnoxious as it maybe. I pretend they stare at me in admiration of my importance. It is my duty to stay as accurate as possible for the benefit of others, for if I were not around to tell humans time, they would never progress. That's the only thing that keeps me motivated to want to stick around in such a boring place. And this is what life is like as a clock.