I fade through the brightly lit corridors with a cerulean slip in hand after escaping Functions & Applications, a Grade 11 math course that’s been ravaging me every night for weeks. The fawn-beige lockers are garrisoned on both sides of the tight, empty halls, blushing a shiny clam shell colour that mirrors an attenuated and distorted reflection of myself as I traipse by.

After drifting past a few cacophonous classrooms and two silent washrooms, I bump my forearm against the cold crash bar to lightly thrust open the door, uncloaking a stairway stitched to a scarlet and sandy brick wall on its right side.

I descend the tan-tiled staircase, my free hand gliding down the shiny wooden handrail hoisted up by dark crimson balusters made of steel. As I make my way to the guidance office, there’s a large question mark floating in my head, wondering why I’ve been summoned to one of the counsellors. It’s a first for me, and it only adds to the anxiety that’s been trailing me for months.

Once I slide into the office, I hand the slip to the middle-aged woman with a short black lob and curtain bangs at the front desk. She tilts her head up and peers at the print through her bold glasses for a few short seconds, although those seconds feel glacial. In a genial tone, she asks me to take a seat until the counsellor is ready to see me. I sit at one of the three cushioned chairs stationed by the exit, letting my eyes wander around the room. I haven’t noticed before — probably because I’m rarely ever in here — but I’m only now registering the room’s peculiar look.

The light maroon door is snuggled between two walls of panes, which almost resemble large grids that look like oversized tic-tac-toe boards. Between these glass barriers are flat, broad pillars made of smooth bricks, one of which is upheaving a cloudy clock just under the drop ceiling. The space is oddly laid out: creamy drywall behind the laminated reception desk, a wooden garden bench with an ornate iron backrest planted by the door, and a paddle board-shaped table by my seat wielding dozens of post-secondary brochures that flaunt stock photos of beaming students.

I pull down my sleeves before fidgeting with my hoodie strings, twisting and releasing, twisting and releasing. Just as my eyes graze over the generic office clock, which reads about 9 a.m., Ms. B steps out from the narrow corridor, her rectangular glasses matching the silvery shine of her pixie cut and dangling earrings.

She greets me with a wrinkled smile, although I’m unsure whether it’s a genuine display of ebullience or if she’s very effectively masking the early Monday blues.

Ms. B invites me to her office, so I follow her across the glossy flooring and into the cramped room containing shelves that are overflowing with binders, files, and paperwork.

Her fingers tapdance over her keyboard before her cursor whirls across her monitor. She pulls up my files — my grades and courses — and spins to me on her wheely chair. I see Advanced Functions and Calculus on her screen, two Grade 12 courses I’ve selected probably a few months ago for next year.

She skates over my current and past grades in math, and then questions whether those two courses are a good idea. I finished math in Grade 9 with an 88 and a 79 in the tenth grade — both applied classes, the “easier” versions of the courses. But right now, I’m floating around the high 60s in Functions & Applications.

“You’re setting yourself up for failure,” she tells me candidly, her voice turning flat. She urges me to reconsider my course selections.

Math was never my strong suit, I admit, although the business programs I want to get into for university require Advanced Functions and Calculus. She tells me that there are other programs in the field that don’t need those prerequisites for potential admission.

There’s other stuff I’m enchanted by, like the non-fiction research assignment I’m doing for English class that requires us to research, create a TED Talk-esque presentation, and design an infographic about a newsworthy topic, tasks that I’d chip away at every day after school. What’s unusual is that I don’t mind dwelling in these projects, minus the public speaking. I keep these sentiments concealed, afraid it would obstruct my goal of getting to where the faces in the stock images appear to be: in a successful program, equipped to make it in life.

For the past few months, I’ve heard chatter about finding a career path that pays well, contributes to society, and has a “good” reputation, which is seemingly the most crucial among the trifecta. There are crosshairs aimed at subjects deemed “unrealistic for the future,” like the arts, a philosophy I quickly adopted.

Internally, there’s a submerged sliver that acknowledges how I’m forcing myself to like the field of business, so much that it’s become an uncomfortably comfortable masquerade. Yet whenever the day wanes and I’m left nose-deep in a chapter on quadratic functions, I would blink through blurs and feel my teeth grit together.

My fingers find my hoodie strings again, swivelling them to look like those DNA structure illustrations you’d find in science textbooks. (Another subject I’d prefer to stray away from.) I shift in the cushioned seat. I think Ms. B is expecting me to say something, although my brain’s racked with tornadoes, over-replicating the convolution in her office.

It’s a rude awakening I should’ve seen coming. My weaknesses aside, if I didn’t diverge from this route, then it’d be an incessant cycle of nightly headaches for another year — and perhaps more. What’s worse is that I’ve been frozen in the role, intent on living the part.

So I impulsively agree. I tell Ms. B that I’ll drop the courses for something else.

It’s a rational decision, she says, although she wants parental consent before she’ll green-light the course alterations. She calls my mom, briefly glosses over the situation, and hands me the grainy textured phone sitting at the side of her desk. My mom doesn’t seem to mind, so she agrees and simply tells me to do what I think is best for myself.

Once everything’s approved, my timetable shuffles around and becomes a balance of classes I don’t mind dabbling in — English, Philosophy, and Indigenous Studies — and the path I initially intended to go down — Data Management, International Business, and Economics.

As I step out of the office and back into the main reception area, I grab a few brochures from the paddle board. The smiles in the stock images are vigorous contrasts to the room they’re caged in; I also hope to find solace despite feeling out of place.