Midnight conversations

My sister pops out of her studio. It's a few minutes past midnight and we're both going to be pulling all-nighters. Or mostly-all-nighters, perhaps.

Sister: Come see what I'm doing. I want to complain about it to someone.

Me: I'll complain about Darwin! His writing is dense.

Sister: See? It's for the same teacher I had to draw those 80 plates for... [plates as in pictures, not dinner plates]

She shows me a circle, covered in tiny lines that are close together in the center and progressively grow farther apart towards the outside. They're criss-crossed, and then triple-criss-crossed, and tiny, and tedious-looking.

Me: How long have you been doing this??

Sister: Uh, three, about four hours. And then I still have to do it in a line, like, extended out...

Me: WHY?? Can't you just look at it in a book?

She laughed and said "that was a good one!". But I still don't know why the teacher can't just hand out photocopies. $0.5 for two pages, one with the bar and one with the circle. Easy-peasy. They can learn to control their pulse by playing the wire loop game.