Work Text:
Barbara stares at the blank page, twirling her pen and trying to think of a first question to write. She feels frozen.
Giving examinations was never her favorite part of her job. Testing is the price you have to pay for teaching; or at least, that’s the way she always thought about it. In the old days, she and Ian used to argue about the pedagogical value of exams.
Still, she’s written plenty of them in her time, and she’s never had such trouble even making a beginning.
The trouble, she thinks, is the subject of the test. She already had to update some of her lectures, when it came to the Aztec unit; she’s still not sure how best to navigate discussing the pieces of information in the textbook that she knows from personal experience are simply wrong.
How is she supposed to think about the Aztecs like a schoolteacher — worse, like a schoolteacher writing a history exam — when she’s lived with them, talked with them, breathed with them?
She wanted so badly to get home, to return to normal life in her own time and place. And she’s grateful, immeasurably so, to be back. It’s only… she wasn’t anticipating how hard it would be, reacclimating after two years of traveling. Adjusting back to new-old rhythms, challenges, ways of life.
Come on, Barbara, she thinks suddenly, and hears herself laugh aloud. You adjusted to alien planets, the past, and the future. You got by as an Aztec high priest, and a Roman emperor’s slave. I think you can get used to being a teacher in London again.
Extra credit: Who was the high priest Yetaxa? she writes at the top of the page — then crosses it out, still laughing at herself, and finds that the mental block has lifted.