Although it isn’t every day, there is an event that causes me to be particularly self-conscious. It is because in this case, I know that everyone looks my way and scrutinizes my motives. This is the moment I stand up early during a test to turn it in. This is followed by a walk down the aisle in which all the students in the class including the teacher look and stare at my composure, the clothes that I am wearing, and other gives at attempts to identify stereotypes deeming me as a good student who did well, or a slacker who gave up. The look they give, that moment that I am highlighted as an individual above the rest to be examined is called the gaze.
Student, dressed in appropriate school wear, looking as if relieved from completing the test. Clothing is to be contemporary and match the era of the other students but stand out enough by contrast to show focus on singlular standing student. Preferably a male, not to tall, not too short, mostly average in composure so that it is difficult to place him into a social stereotype. Average lecture hall, stadium seating, with around 200 students of multiple cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The class is not specified in subject matter, main character is seated second from an aisle seat two-thirds up the lecture hall from the front, where the paper is to be turned in. As he stands up, the people around him move their stuff to ease his exit. When he walks down the stair aisle, heads turn for slight moments and he doesn’t notice the gaping eyes. The professor locks eyes with him as he slowly makes it down, not to make a sound even though he is distracting the whole room. As he turns in the paper, he says thank you lightly and the professor nods. He zips his backpack up, a standard jansport-like backpack with no significant markings, clean and mostly empty. He leaves through the most visible door to the camera which this whole time was from the perspective of a student sitting in the middle of a row two or three rows back from where main character was sitting.
I think it is funny that the when the first person gets up to leave, everyone looks at them the way you described to decipher whether or not that person just bombed the test or aced it.
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