Early May, 1996. A stressful week. (#82)

February 6, 2021December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 17 Comments

A few months before every Olympic Games, the Olympic torch is lit by the sun on Mount Olympus in Greece and brought across Greece and the country hosting the Games that year. In 1996, the upcoming Summer Olympics would be held in Atlanta, on the opposite side of the United States from Jeromeville. The torch would travel across the United States by way of a relay. Thousands of people would carry the torch for a short distance, then pass it to someone else, with crowds of onlookers watching as the torch made its way across their parts of the country.

On the day before the torch passed through Jeromeville, I sat alone at a table at the Memorial Union, eating a burrito and doing the crossword puzzle in the Daily Colt. I had work to do, I had a combinatorics midterm coming up in a few days, but I was not in the mood to do work, given everything on my mind. I had been looking for a house for next year, with no luck so far, and I was starting to worry about this. (This was before I talked to Shawn about looking for an apartment instead.)

I walked into combinatorics class about five minutes before it was scheduled to start; this was the last class before the midterm. I was a quarter ahead in math entering the University of Jeromeville, so I did not take freshman calculus in large lecture halls with people who were taking math on schedule. Because of that, this combinatorics class, with about eighty people, was the largest math class I had taken at UJ so far. I looked around the room and saw Andrea Briggs, who had been in a few classes with me before and lived in the dorm next to mine last year. She sat next to an open seat, so I walked up to it and asked, “May I sit here?”

“Sure,” Andrea replied.

“How are you?”

“I’m great!” she said. “Jay came to visit this weekend, and he proposed!” Andrea held up her left hand, with the third finger now bearing a diamond ring.

“Congratulations!” I said awkwardly. Was that the right thing to say in response to this? I was not sure. As far as I knew, she was the first of my friends to get engaged. This was a completely new experience to me.

“What about you?” she asked. “How are you?”

“My week hasn’t been nearly as exciting. I had a quiz in my other math class this morning.”

“Which class? How’d you do?”

“167, with Dr. Ionescu. I’m getting an A in that class, but I feel like I’m not learning anything. Most of what we’re doing is just review from 22A. And the entire grade is based on surprise quizzes every three or four classes, so there’s no reason to remember anything.”

“Yeah, that’s weird. But at least you’re getting an A.”

“Yeah.”

Gabby, the combinatorics professor, began lecturing about generating functions for recurrence relations, so I stopped talking and began taking notes. Dr. Gabrielle Thomas was my favorite math professor at UJ so far. She was fairly young, I would guess in her thirties; she spoke English clearly; and she told us to call her Gabby, which seemed refreshingly informal to me. That made her feel more like a human being, whom I could relate to, compared to many of my other professors.

I tried to focus on what Gabby was saying, because of the upcoming midterm. I still had not mastered recurrence relations, but I thought I would probably do fine once I took the time to study and practice the material. However, I had a hard time concentrating today. I kept wanting to sneak glances at Andrea’s left hand, not because of any particular curiosity about what her ring looked like, but because she had one in the first place. I was over Andrea as a possible love interest; I found out over a year ago that she had a boyfriend. But it just felt weird, and discouraging, that I was at the age when my friends would be getting married. Andrea would soon be committing herself to one man for life, probably starting a family with him after she finished school, and I had still never kissed a girl.

After class, as I headed back to the Memorial Union where my bicycle was parked, I saw Danielle Coronado and Claire Seaver from church sitting at a table talking. Danielle was one of the first friends I made at UJ; she lived down the hall from me in my dorm last year. “Hey,” I said as I approached them.

“Greg!” Danielle said, smiling and waving.

“Hey, Greg,” Claire said. “Have you started your project yet?”

“Kind of.”

“Which math class do you two have together?” Danielle asked me.

“Anthro 2,” I explained. “Not math.” Danielle’s assumption was warranted, however, because Claire was a music major with a minor in mathematics.

“That’s right, anthro,” Danielle said. “With that professor who did a class for the IHP last year.”

“Yes. Dick Small.” I still found that name hilarious, because of my extensive background in dirty jokes. “I’m going to observe and write about the IRC channel FriendlyChat,” I continued.

“Is that that thing where you talk to strangers on the computer?”

“Yeah. Internet Relay Chat. I was in FriendlyChat earlier today, and there’s some kind of complicated leadership structure with who gets to be a channel operator, and all these rules that they get mad at you for not knowing. And when I kept announcing that I was doing an anthro project, as the ethics of anthropology require, some of them got mad at me for spamming. So I’m off to a frustrating start.”

“Well, hopefully you’ll figure out a way to get your project done.”

“I hope so. I’m just stressed about a lot of things.”

“Sounds like it.”

“I want to go see the torch tomorrow, though,” I said.

“Oh yeah! When is that supposed to be?”

“It’ll be passing along Fifth Street between 1 and 2.”

“I have class,” Danielle said, feeling slightly disappointed. “But have fun!”

“I will! I’m going to head home now, but I’ll see you guys soon.”

“Bye, Greg,” Claire said.

“Bye,” Danielle added, waving.

I waved at the girls as I walked to my bicycle and went home. I was riding a little more slowly than usual. I felt weighed down by my upcoming midterm, the anthro project, looking for a house, and my fear of being left behind now that people I knew were getting married.

I had most of the next day free. After I finished my one class, I planned to stay on campus and get work done until around noon, eat lunch, then go find a place to watch the Olympic torch. I walked into the Memorial Union after class and looked for a table. I saw Sarah Winters, whom I knew both from the dorm last year and from Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, sitting by herself at a table, reading, with a notebook and textbook open. I walked to her table and asked, “May I sit here?”

“Yeah!” Sarah said. “How are you?”

“I’m stressed,” I said.

“What’s going on?”

“I’ve been trying to find a house for us next year, I’ve looked at a bunch of places, and I haven’t heard anything back yet. And I have a big midterm for Math 145 tomorrow. And I’m frustrated in general with Applied Linear Algebra, Math 167. That class is a waste of time, and I’m not learning anything.” Sarah began writing something as I continued speaking. “And I just found out that someone I know, her boyfriend proposed. I’ve never even had a girlfriend, and now I have friends who are getting married.” As Sarah continued writing, I wondered if I was bothering her, if I should let her work on whatever she was doing. “And I have this big project for Anthro 2 that I need to work on, and what I wanted to do hasn’t been working out so far.” I stopped talking now, because Sarah was clearly busy with whatever she was working on. I got out my combinatorics textbook and began looking over the section that would be covered on the test tomorrow.

“This is for you,” Sarah said, as she placed the paper she had been writing on top of my textbook. I read what she wrote:

“I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your path straight.”
Proverbs 3:5-6

I looked up and saw Sarah looking at me with a peaceful, contented smile on her face. “Thank you,” I said, attempting a smile in return.

“Everything’s gonna be just fine,” Sarah said. “Really.”

“I know,” I said. “But–”

“You’ll be okay.”

I took a deep breath. “I’ll be okay.”

We sat there for the rest of the hour studying, occasionally making small talk. “What are you doing the rest of the day?” Sarah asked at one point.

“I’m done with classes for the day. But I’m gonna go see the torch.”

“Fun! I can’t. I’ll be in class during that time.”

I looked again at the note that Sarah wrote. God had a plan for me. My grades, my house for next year, my future wife, all of this was in God’s hands. Trust God. The second verse, from Proverbs, was a little bit familiar to me already, because there was a song we sang at Bible study sometimes based on that verse. I had made a decision that I was living my life for Jesus, and now it was time to trust him to make this all work out somehow.

Sarah left to go to class a bit later. As I continued studying combinatorics, I really did begin to feel better about tomorrow’s midterm. At noon, I got out the sandwich I had packed that morning, and when I finished that, I headed toward Fifth Street at the northern edge of campus. Crowds waiting to see the torch were already beginning to line the street. I found a spot next to an aged olive tree and leaned against the tree, waiting. I had my backpack with me, so I continued studying combinatorics while I waited for the torch to arrive.

After I had been waiting for about forty minutes, I saw police cars approaching slowly, stopping drivers and pedestrians from entering or crossing Fifth Street. This must be it. Behind the police cars were a number of official vehicles with US and Olympic flags; a truck from Coca-Cola, the event’s sponsor; and finally someone wearing running shorts holding the Olympic torch. I did not know if the torchbearer was someone famous or not.

I looked up at the torch in wonder. That flame was ignited on the other side of the world and brought all the way here, continuously burning. That felt kind of surreal. This was a symbol of one of the biggest athletic events on Earth. In two months, the world would be watching athletes from every inhabited continent competing for Olympic glory, and this same flame would burn over the shiny new stadium that Atlanta had just finished building for these Games. People cheered at the moment that the torchbearer passed in front of them, and I joined in as he passed me.

A few minutes after the torch passed, when the entire entourage had moved beyond where I was standing, I turned around to go back to the Memorial Union, where my bicycle was parked. “Excuse me?” a man asked me. He had a fancy camera on a strap around his neck and a small Coca-Cola logo embroidered on his shirt on his chest to his left.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Can I get a picture of you holding this?” The man handed me a full, unopened Coca-Cola plastic bottle.

I was confused. “Why me?” I asked.

“No reason. I’m just looking for people to photograph with Coke bottles, for our promotional materials.”

“Okay,” I said. I smiled at the camera, holding the drink up, as he clicked the shutter a few times.

“Thank you!” the photographer said. “You can keep the Coke.”

I walked back toward my bike as I drank my free Coca-Cola. To this day, I never saw my picture in any Coca-Cola advertisements, so I do not know if they ever ended up doing anything with the picture. But I got a free drink out of it.

When I got home that afternoon, I turned on the computer and connected to the campus Internet, listening to the whirs and clicks of the modem dialing the access number. I opened a text terminal and connected to Internet Relay Chat, then entered the FriendlyChat channel using my usual screen name, “gjd76.” About a minute after I joined, I copied and pasted the same message I copied and pasted every fifteen minutes while I was working on this: “I am working on a project for an anthropology class, making observations of the culture in this channel. I will not use your actual names or actual screen names.”

“gjd76, u might not wanna tell us that, people might act different if they know ur studying them,” one person typed.

“true, but my professor says it’s unethical not to tell people they’re being studied,” I replied.

“Let me know if I can answer any questions for you,” one of the channel operators said.

“i will,” I typed back. So far, this was going much better than yesterday; people were actually being helpful.

As I reached for my notebook in my backpack, I found the note that Sarah had written to me, with the Bible verses on it. I read it again. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Good advice. I took two push pins and attached Sarah’s note to the bulletin board above my desk. That way it could be a reminder for me while I was sitting here at the computer; I could look up and see those Scriptures.

I spent about an hour and a half in the FriendlyChat channel, and this time I was able to make much more meaningful observations and have more meaningful interactions with the people in the chat than I had yesterday. If I had a few more days like this, I would have plenty of material to use to write my paper. I also felt much better about my midterm for combinatorics, after having studied today. I had still not heard from any of the houses I was looking for, but the more I thought about this, I decided I would talk to my roommates for next year and find out if they would be willing to look for an apartment instead. They were fine with living in an apartment, and we did end up getting one, as I told before. And while I was still discouraged with my own lack of romantic relationship in light of Andrea being engaged, the Lord had a plan for her that was not his plan for me, and I was not ready to begin thinking about marriage with anyone right now. I was better off trusting in His timing.

I would learn later in life that the quote from Jeremiah is often derided as one of the Bible verses most frequently taken out of context. Reading the chapters around it reveals that God declared those words to a specific group of people at a specific time, not to everyone reading them throughout all of history. However, statements like that reveal the character of God, and although Jeremiah was not writing to me, the God who had a plan for his people thousands of years ago did also have a plan for me in 1996. The precise concept of “prosper” may not have involved material wealth in my case, but I just had to trust that God knew what was best for me. Those two verses became ones that I have known from memory ever since.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding,” I began singing under my breath. I liked that song, the one I had heard at Bible study before. I did not know any of this at the time, but the original vocalist of that song was the same age as me, and still a teenager when the song was recorded. The guitarist, who actually wrote the song, was not much older. The two of them and their band would go on to have a major pop hit a few years later, which would confuse me a little in a time when I tended to draw very strict lines between Christian and secular music. But that is a story for another time.

January 29 – February 2, 1996. Four midterms in one day. (#69)

November 7, 2020December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 26 Comments

I stood at the bus stop on Alvarez Avenue with mixed emotions on a cold, dry Monday morning. A small crowd waited with me for the bus that would bring us to campus in time for 9:00 classes. I was not sure if I would have to stand or not; this was only the fifth stop on the bus route, but in this cold weather, fewer students would be riding bicycles to campus.

I was coming off of a high from the weekend. I made some new friends Friday night at Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, Eddie and Xander and Haley and Kristina and Kelly; we had a fun night of talking and games at the girls’ house. And Sunday Eddie and Xander and their roommates hosted a party to watch the professional football championship. Eddie borrowed a projector from his church and put a big bed sheet on a wall, so we could watch the game on a huge screen. It was a little dim, but it worked. After a year of feeling alone and less connected to my friends, compared to last year in the dorm, this felt like a huge step in the right direction. Eddie and Xander and six other guys from JCF all shared a house, with Haley and her roommates right down the street and another house of guys from JCF around the corner. Maybe next year I would be able to live in this kind of situation and feel more connected to people and things around me.

Despite being on an emotional high, however, two metaphorical black clouds loomed on the horizon. The game did not end the way I wanted, with the despised Texas Toros winning by a score of 27 to 17. Texas had won three out of the last four championships, and that would bring smug taunts from all of the haters of my Bay City Captains. The Captains lost in the semifinal round this year. But, more importantly, I was worried about this coming Friday, when I had midterms in all four classes on the same day.

On Sunday, at the football party, I had mentioned the four midterms. “Can you ask your professors if you can take the midterm on another day?” Eddie had asked.

“I think there’s a rule that they can’t make you take that many midterms on the same day,” Xander added.

I had not considered that approach; I had just assumed I was stuck with this crappy schedule. So my plan for today was to ask each of my four professors if I could take the midterm early. Hopefully, by suggesting early rather than late, they would see that I wanted to use my study time wisely and do my best, not get an advantage that others would not have.

“Not possible,” my professor for Differential Equations said curtly after I presented my request. “You got the dates for the midterms on the syllabus on the first day of the quarter. If those dates were a problem for you, you should have dropped the class.” This professor, a middle-aged balding man who told us to call him Larry, never bothered me before, but after that day I decided I did not like him.

I had an hour break before my next class, so I walked across the Quad. This was the oldest part of campus, dating back to the school’s founding in 1905. The Quad was a grassy rectangle surrounded by tall oak trees as old as the campus itself, with a paved path running north-south down the middle, and a few pines, redwoods, and other trees scattered on the grass. On a warmer day, the Quad would gradually fill with students sitting on the grass to study, or socialize, or socialize while attempting to study. But at ten in the morning on a cold day in late January, the Quad was empty except for the trees and a few students walking across it to get from one building to another.

The Memorial Union building lay just north of the Quad, extending all the way across it east to west. The building was home to a number of student-run commercial enterprises, the namesake memorial to University of Jeromeville alumni who died in wars, a post office, the campus store, offices and meeting rooms for the Associated Students organization, ATMs for three different banks, and my current destination, the Coffee House. This was a large student-run enterprise that served pizza, burritos, sandwiches, soup, and all sorts of other food items, in addition to the hot beverages after which it was named. Next to the kitchens and cash registers were large expanses of tables which made good places to study and people-watch.

I got a large hot chocolate and began scanning the crowded tables for an empty one, or for someone I knew. I saw Scott Madison from JCF sitting alone with some kind of fancy spiral-bound book in front of him. I walked up and asked, “Can I join you?”

“Hi, Greg!” Scott said. “Sure!” As I sat down and got out my math book, Scott slid the book in front of him toward me and said, “Check out what I got! It was on sale, because it’s already the end of January.” It was a day planner, which Scott had filled out with dates of upcoming exams and projects, Bible studies, JCF activities, and other plans he knew he had coming up.

“That’s nice,” I said. “I wish I could be that organized. Every year I get the little planner they sell at the campus store, and by the middle of October I’m not keeping up with it.”

“It really helps, especially when you’re busy like me.”

I grabbed Scott’s planner and turned it toward me, flipping to the week of August 11-17. Scott looked at me wondering what I was doing. I did not want to spy on his plans; I simply wrote “Greg’s birthday” on August 15.

“Nice,” Scott said. “I guess I have to send you something now.”

“It’s in your planner, so yeah, you do. That’s the plan.”

Scott and I continued alternating between small talk and silent studying until it was time for my next class, Math 108, Introduction to Abstract Mathematics. This was the first quarter that I had taken two math classes simultaneously, something I would be doing often as a mathematics major, as well as the first quarter that I took upper-division classes. Those unfamiliar with advanced mathematics would be surprised that this course involves very little calculation, instead covering mathematical logic, set theory, and the fundamentals of abstract algebra and analysis. The professor was a gray-haired, well-dressed man named Dr. Davis Cutter; his official title was “professor emeritus,” which I believe meant that he was officially retired but still performed some duties for the university. I always thought there was something pretentious about having a last name for a first name, but Dr. Davis Cutter seemed like a nice man. Maybe he would be nice enough to let me take the midterm early.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I can do that,” Dr. Cutter said. “We have a policy against that, and in order to maintain academic integrity, I can’t give out the test early.”

“Okay,” I said. “I figured it would be worth asking.”

“Good luck studying,” Dr. Cutter replied. “You’ll probably do fine.”

“Thank you.” Apparently this department policy trumped Xander’s rule about not having more than three midterms in one day. I had never heard of this rule other than Xander mentioning it yesterday, and by now I suspected it was not real.

After Abstract Mathematics, I had English 101, Advanced Composition. Every student at UJ had to take three writing classes; since I had passed the AP English test in high school, I only had to take one of the three. This instructor was a middle-aged hippie woman named Dr. Paris; I was under the impression that we would be learning how to write in the class, but she made the assignments about things like art and feminism, not exactly topics I was familiar with.

“Dr. Paris?” I asked as she was putting things away at the end of class.

“Yes?”

“So I noticed the other day that all four of my classes have midterms on the same day. Is there any way I might be able to take Friday’s midterm early?”

“Oh… I can’t do that,” Dr. Paris said. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. I thought I’d ask just in case.”

“I can’t just give it twice on different days.”

“I understand. See you next time.”

My classes so far today had all been in Wellington and Orton Halls, two buildings near the Quad that each contained dozens of classrooms used by all subjects. My last class was physics, back to back with English with no break, and not in the Quad area. As I walked to Ross Hall, where the large physics lectures always were, I thought about how everyone had rejected my plan so far. Larry’s statement about dropping the class especially stuck with me. It had never occurred to me to drop a class for that reason, or to plan my entire quarter around the dates of the midterms. It made more sense to me to plan my schedule in a way that works for my day-to-day life over the ten weeks of the quarter, even if that means one or two hard days of multiple tests or multiple papers due. But now I had to suck it up and accept the fact that I would have one very difficult day. And I would have another difficult day later in the quarter, since three of my classes have a second midterm on the same day, February 23.

I was still hopeful that I might get to take the physics midterm early. This class was in a large lecture hall with almost 200 students, and it would be difficult to get Dr. Collins’ attention after class. But I knew that Dr. Collins had office hours immediately after class, because I had been in there a few times with physics questions, so when class got out I followed him to his office in the Physics-Geology Building, adjacent to Ross. By the time I got there, three people were ahead of me in line.

“Dr. Collins?” I said ten minutes later when it was my turn. “I have four midterms all on Friday. I was wondering if there would be any way I can take the physics midterm early, so I can get one out of the way first.”

Dr. Collins thought for a minute, then checked his calendar. “I think I can do that,” he said. “Can you be here in my office Thursday at 3?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Great. I’ll see you then.”

“Thank you so much,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” Dr. Collins replied. “Good luck!”

I walked back in the direction of the Quad and Wellington, where I would be leading a tutoring group at 4:00. It was nice of Dr. Collins to reschedule my midterm. I expected him to be the least likely to make this arrangement, just since his class of 200 students was so much bigger and less personal than my other classes. I was not sure at this point if Dr. Collins recognized my face or knew my name. He was the first professor that I had had twice; I also took the first quarter of physics with Dr. Collins last spring, and I was in his office hours frequently after bombing the first midterm. This week, I would still end up taking four midterms in under twenty-four hours, but now at least I could concentrate on physics first, and then only have three midterms to study for when I got home on Thursday. This was a definite improvement.

I spent most of the rest of the week studying. I had enough routine homework to work on that I did not do a lot of special studying for the midterms until Wednesday. It was a rough week, and by the time Thursday afternoon arrived, I felt that I had very little free time or relaxation all week. I also owed emails to six different girls I knew from the Internet.

After eating a burrito at the Coffee House for lunch, I headed to Ross Hall for physics lab. I walked past the library, where a sculpture of an egg with a face had his nose buried in a book. One of the writing assignments in Dr. Paris’ Advanced Composition had been to research the meaning of a work of art on the UJ campus and write about it. I chose the Egghead sculptures, one of which was here in front of the library. To most of my peers, they were just weird, but I learned to appreciate them more after I read about them. The one in front of the library seems fairly straightforward, he is engrossed in his studies, although to this day I still do not understand why it is a different color than the other six Eggheads. I heard somewhere that students rub the Egghead during exams for good luck. I do not believe in luck, but with four midterms in the next twenry-four hours, I took no chances and rubbed the Egghead.

When I finished my lab, I walked across the path to the building where Dr. Collins’ office was and knocked on the door. “Hi,” Dr. Collins said.

“I’m here to take the midterm early. You told me to come now.”

“Oh, yes! Greg, was it?”

“Yeah.”

“Just sit here, and let me know when you finish. I’ll be working on some things here.”

I looked through the exam, reading every question before I started. Electric current… electric fields… watts, amperes, joules… I can do this. Everything looks familiar, like homework problems that I had studied last night. No problem. I finished the problems in about half an hour, then went over each problem again to make sure I did not make any miscalculations, and that my answer made sense. “I’m done,” I said to Dr. Collins at 3:40.

“Just leave it here on the desk.”

“Do I need to come to class tomorrow if I’ve already taken the midterm?”

“No. Take the afternoon off.”

“I will. See you Monday. And thank you so much for letting me do this.”

I went home and took a break from studying. I answered emails for about an hour, then ate a Hungry-Man dinner. After that, I continued studying, looking over the writing concepts we had learned in English class and all of the math problems we had done and words and theorems we had learned in the two math classes. I felt fairly confident about Differential Equations, but Abstract Math was a little more of a concern, mostly because Dr. Davis Cutter did not always follow the textbook, and my handwritten notes were a little messy and hard to read. I opened a blank Microsoft Word file and typed all of my notes for Abstract Math; that made them both legible and fresh in my mind.

The next morning, I walked straight from the bus stop to my Differential Equations exam. It was easy, as I suspected it would be, and I left class ten minutes early. I spent the extra time sitting against a wall in the Coffee House, since all the tables were full, reading my Abstract Math notes. I felt fairly confident by the time class began. When I arrived, I looked over all of the questions first, and all of them seemed straightforward. One problem mentioned the Well-Ordering Principle; I drew a blank on what that was. Ordering? Putting numbers in order? Oh, yes, any set of one or more natural numbers has a smallest number. This seems obvious in colloquial language but needs to be clarified in the exact science of abstract mathematics.

I had an hour for lunch, in which I gobbled down the sandwich and banana that I brought from home in five minutes so I could have more time to study for English. I had a mental block against English that had persisted since I got a B-minus in tenth grade English four years ago, the lowest grade I got in high school. By the time I arrived at Dr. Paris’ class, I just wanted to get this over so I could get home and enjoy a weekend of not having to study. The questions about sentence and paragraph structure were pretty straightforward and seemed to match everything I studied, and the part where I had to write, I did the best I could. I was not as worried for this class, because with the four papers we had to write, the midterm did not count for as large a share of the grade as my other midterms did. By the end of the hour, I knew that I had done the best I can, so I turned in my test to Dr. Paris and walked toward the bus stop.

I did it, I thought, as the bus left the Memorial Union and turned on West Fifth Street, passing fraternity and sorority houses. I had completed four exams in just under twenty-four hours. I was getting home an hour earlier than usual, since I had already taken the physics test that the rest of my class was taking now. And I felt confident about the midterms. I began my post-midterm relaxation weekend by collapsing on my bed as soon as I got home, at 2:30; I closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew, it was after 4:00.

I spent the next three hours wasting time on the Internet, talking on IRC, writing emails, and checking a few Usenet groups. I also worked on Try, Try Again, the novel I had been writing off and on for a few months, as I waited for people to reply to me. At seven o’clock, I drove to campus, since parking at night only is less expensive than parking all day, and walked to the lobby of 170 Evans, the lecture hall where Jeromeville Christian Fellowship met.

Eddie, my new friend who hosted the football party last weekend, was doing name tags with Raphael, who had been his roommate the year before. “Today was the day with all your midterms, right?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah. One of my professors let me take his yesterday. So I had three today. I think I did okay.”

“Good! I’m glad you got through that.”

I put on my name tag and stepped into the lecture hall, bumping into and almost knocking over Haley Channing as she walked up the aisle perpendicular to me. “Oh!” she gasped.

“Haley! I’m sorry!” I said nervously. Of course, life would throw this curveball at me; after all of my hard work and four midterms I felt good about, I end the week by embarrassing myself in front of Haley, narrowly avoiding injuring her in the process.

“Hi, Greg,” Haley chuckled. Hopefully that reaction was a good sign. “How are you?”

“I’m great. I had four midterms today.”

“Four?” Haley asked incredulously.

“One professor let me take one early, but I still had all four in twenty-four hours. And I think I did okay. I’m just glad it’s over.

“I would be too! I have a paper due Monday. I’m going to be doing that all weekend.”

“Good luck!” I said. Then, after a brief hesitation, I asked, “Where are you sitting?”

“Down there next to Kelly,” Haley replied, pointing to the back of her roommate’s head. “Want to come sit with us?”

“Yeah!”

“I’ll be right back.” After Haley stepped outside, I walked to the front of the room and sat next to Kelly. Haley returned a few minutes later, just as the band started playing. I did my best to concentrate on the band’s worship music and Janet McAllen’s talk and not be too distracted by Haley’s cute smile. And, after hearing her sing, I discovered that she had a nice voice too.

After JCF ended, I stood around making small talk with people for a while. I did not get invited to any social plans afterward, and I did not get to talk much more with Haley because she went home immediately afterward to work on her paper. This week, I did not care about having no social plans. I was exhausted after my hard week of studying, and a weekend at home by myself being lazy sounded perfect. I could socialize next weekend when I had recovered.

I did well on all four midterms, even the one in English that I was less certain about. That stressful week took a lot out of me, but I survived. If life was trying to get me down, it would take much more than four midterms in twenty-four hours. A year and a half into my studies at a somewhat prestigious university, I was still excelling academically. My future goals may not be entirely clear right now, particularly with my mathematics major, but I was keeping my grades up, and that would be important if I did go to graduate school eventually. School was always one of my strengths, and that had not changed in the last few years; all I had to do to get good grades was work hard enough.

And in August, when my birthday came around, I did in fact get a card from Scott. He was serious about sending me something after I wrote my birthday in his planner. I liked this new group of friends.

May 18, 1995. The Coventry Greenbelt. (#38)

January 9, 2020December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 26 Comments

I parked my bike outside of Wellington Hall, a rectangular brick building which consisted only of classrooms used for many different subjects, and headed to Room 17 in the basement for my chemistry discussion. Chemistry 2B was a large class of around four hundred students held in 199 Stone Hall, the largest lecture hall on campus in the 1990s. Labs and discussions met in smaller groups of 24 students, all from the same lecture section, led by a teaching assistant who was a graduate student from the chemistry department.

The desks in Wellington 17, as was the case with most classrooms at UJ, were just chairs with a little retractable piece of wood that a student could pull up and use as a hard surface for writing. I sat in a chair, pulled the desk up into place, and put my head down on it with my eyes closed. I was tired. I had been up for a while. I started class on Thursday at 10:00 in the morning, but I woke up early enough to be ready for class at 9, because every other day I had a 9:00 class. It was now 9:57, and I was ready to go back to sleep because I had not slept well the night before.

A couple minutes later, I heard someone sit next to me and begin to speak. “Hey, Greg! Are you okay?” I recognized the voice; it was Marissa, my lab partner.

I opened my eyes and looked up. “I didn’t sleep well. The fire alarm went off at 2:30, and it took me almost an hour to get back to sleep.”

“What? Fire? Where?”

“My dorm. Building C in the South Area. We all had to evacuate.”

“What was on fire?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think anything was on fire. There wasn’t any smoke or anything, at least I couldn’t see anything on fire.”

“So what set it off?”

“I don’t know.”

“Weird.”

“Oh yeah. It was hilarious. I was climbing down the stairs, and Amy, the RA from the third floor, she goes, ‘If you see or smell anything strange, let me know.’ My friend Rebekah, she’s also on the third floor, she says, ‘I see and smell Amy. Should I let you know?’”

“She actually said that?” Marissa asked, laughing. “Oh my gosh!”

“Yeah! She’s hilarious. We had the same math class fall quarter, and the professor posted grades by ID number. She figured out which one was me, because she knew what I got on all the other midterms, so she knew what I got on the final before I did.”

“No way.”

“And she told me, ‘Next quarter, I’m going to freak out just like you did, and maybe then I’ll get 99 percent just like you.’”

“That’s funny! Did you freak out on your math final?”

“I think she just meant how I was really stressed about the final, but I probably didn’t have to be, since I did so well. It was my first final here, so I didn’t know what to expect.”

“That makes sense. Are we getting the chem midterm back today?”

“I think so. I don’t think I did very well on this one. At least not as well as I usually do.”

In Chemistry 2B, the TA passed back the midterms and took time in the discussion to answer questions about the midterm. It was not like Physics 9A, where I had to get my own test paper off of a shelf. A few minutes after class started, the TA began passing back the midterms. I nervously looked at mine when I got it.

86, out of 100.

Not bad like that physics midterm from a few weeks earlier, but not as well as I usually do. I was a little disappointed in myself, but not panicking.

Marissa got her midterm back shortly after I did. She looked through it excitedly. “This is the best I’ve ever done on a chem midterm!” she said.

“Mine was the worst for me. But good job.”

“I got 86! What did you get?”

My brain took a second to process what I had just heard. This certainly put things in perspective. “86,” I said sheepishly.

“Really?” Marissa asked. I showed her my midterm. “My best score is your worst score. That’s kind of sad.”

“No it isn’t,” I said. “It puts things in perspective. Maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about always being perfect.”

“You really shouldn’t. 86 isn’t bad. And you’re still going to ace the final, probably.”

“I don’t know. We’ll see. But you’re right. 86 isn’t bad. Good job.”

“You too.”

I had one more class later that day, and when that was done, I got back to the dorm shortly after 2:00. The chalkboard in the stairwell still said COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT MEETING. The resident advisers, Gurpreet and Amy, had not erased this announcement yet. The meeting was two days ago; we had discussed how things had been going, and Gurpreet and Amy had given us information about procedures for moving out, which we would be doing in four weeks.

I sat down to check email, and I started to nod off while I was reading, so I turned off the computer and lay down for a nap. The fire alarm and evacuation last night had thrown off my sleeping, and I had had trouble staying awake in both of my classes. I was done for the day, though, and although I had math homework due tomorrow, I was in no shape to do it now. I closed my eyes and drifted off.

When I woke up, I could tell that I had been asleep. I checked my watch; it was almost 4:00. The sun was out, and it was fairly warm today. I had been wearing jeans this morning, but by now it was warm enough to wear shorts. It felt like a good day to be outside.

After I changed into shorts, I got on my bike. I headed south toward the Arboretum and the Lodge, then I turned east toward the law school and Marks Hall. I had done this bike ride several other times in my year at UJ. The long, narrow, park-like Arboretum, following a dry creek bed which had been converted into a very long lake, was a peaceful oasis in the middle of a busy campus. Just past Marks Hall, a large grassy area sloped gently down to the waterway, which widened into a more lake-like shape, and I saw several students lying on the grass reading. I was not the only one who felt like being outside today, apparently.

Near the east end of the Arboretum, I turned on a path that led to the intersection of First and B Streets downtown. I continued north on B Street, past Central Park and through an old residential neighborhood. This was all familiar territory; I had done this ride a few times before and driven parts of B Street in the car.

B Street ended at the intersection with 15th Street. In front of me was Jeromeville Community Park, the largest park in the city, which bordered the Veterans Memorial Hall, the public library, a public pool, Jeromeville High School, an elementary school, and the Jeromeville Arts Center. The Veterans Memorial Hall was visible in front of me along 15th Street, with a bike path to its left. I had never noticed that path before. I crossed the street and continued north on that path.

I rode past Veterans Memorial Hall and the public swimming pool on my right, with part of the parking lot for the high school on my left. Behind this I rode past tennis courts and soccer and baseball fields. I could see ahead that this path led to an overpass crossing Coventry Boulevard. I had driven under that overpass before, but I never knew anything about the path on top, where it came from or where it led.

On the other side of the overpass, north of Coventry Boulevard, the path led down into a park. I saw backs of homes and yards and apartment buildings, and streets adjoining the park on the left and the right. A number of short paths led to adjoining streets, one leading back to Coventry Boulevard. The path I rode on continued north, and I also noticed a long path to the west which, like the one I was on, continued for some distance instead of ending at a street. A sign attached to a lamppost said “COVENTRY GREENBELT AREA 8.”

I chose to continue north. I rode past grassy areas and many different kinds of trees, past a playground and tennis courts. The path turned to the right and then left again, outside of the park and into a very different landscape. The path was straight, with a large vacant lot on the left, and on the right, fences separating the path from backyards and short paths branching off to the ends of culs-de-sac connected to some unseen street to the east.

After three such paths leading to other streets, the path I was on crossed a street at a crosswalk. On the other side of the street, fenced backs of yards and paths branching to other streets now lined both sides of the path, with a thin strip of landscaping on either side of the path. I had never seen a neighborhood like this before, with dead-end streets connecting to a continuous bicycle and pedestrian path. Jeromeville advertises itself as being a bicycle-friendly community, and apparently in Jeromeville this slogan means more than just bike lanes on major streets and parts of the university campus being closed to cars. This part of Jeromeville, a fairly new subdivision, seemed to be constructed entirely around bicycle travel.

About a quarter mile after I crossed that street, the bicycle path entered another large park. This one had a small playground to the left of the path, with soccer fields beyond. On my right, to the east, was a pond, with rushes and reeds and bushes growing along its shore. A boardwalk extended about a hundred feet to the right, with some kind of informational sign at the end, probably about wildlife or plants or something like that. Straight ahead of me was another smaller pond, and the path curved to the right between the two ponds. I continued along the path as it curved northeast, then abruptly ended at a street, with the northern tip of the large pond to my right, an office building to my left, and a residential neighborhood across the street straight ahead from me.

I looked at the name on the street sign across from me. This was the corner of Salmon Drive and Andrews Road. I knew where I was now.

Andrews Road is a major street running north-south on the UJ campus and in west-central Jeromeville, parallel to Highway 117 about half a mile east. In the northernmost part of the city of Jeromeville, Andrews Road curves through recently constructed residential areas onto a more east-west route, ending at G Street a couple hundred feet to the right of where I was now. I was very close to the northernmost point of the city of Jeromeville, where the geography changes from residential neighborhoods to the flat farmland that Arroyo Verde County is known for.

I turned around and headed back to the small playground on the other side of the ponds, but instead of going back the way I came, I rode to the west along the soccer fields. A sign called this part of the path COVENTRY GREENBELT AREA 3. I had seen other signs like this along the path I had ridden, the numbers changing each time. I was, and still am to this day, unsure if the numbers have a pattern or what they mean.

At the end of this path, I turned south on another path, through more numbered areas of the Coventry Greenbelt, again with fences separating me from backyards on both sides. I crossed a street, and the greenbelt widened, with the houses on either side of me farther apart. The path curved a bit. I saw a statue of a dog near the sign saying that I was in COVENTRY GREENBELT AREA 5. I rode through grassy areas spotted with trees, continuing south. Another path and greenbelt branched off to my right, and as I passed a playground, yet another path and greenbelt branched off to my left. I continued south, into a thick grove of pine trees, the ground covered with dead needles. I made a mental note that I had a lot more exploring to do in the future, to figure out where those other paths went.

I entered a tunnel under a street and emerged at Coventry Boulevard, where the pine trees suddenly cleared. I knew this must be Coventry Boulevard. I was pretty sure there were no other four-lane divided streets in this part of Jeromeville. And if this was Coventry Boulevard, the tunnel I just emerged from must have crossed under Alvarez Avenue. My apartment for next year was on Alvarez Avenue, but farther west, to my right.

I turned right on Coventry and left on Andrews Road, back toward campus. When I got back to Building C, about ten minutes after emerging from the tunnel, I locked my bike and entered the building from the back, into the stairwell across from the lobby. Someone had changed the announcement about the COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT MEETING by selectively erasing letters. It now said COMMUNITY ASS EETING. I laughed out loud.

“Greg!” I heard a voice say. “What’s so funny?”

I looked down. Sarah Winters, who had asked the question, and Krista Curtis were sitting on the stairs talking. One of the quirks of university dormitory culture is that people can sit and socialize just about anywhere. Sometimes that was annoying, as I discovered two months ago when I was awakened from my sleep, but other times, like now, it gave me socializing opportunities that rarely ever happened at any other point in my life.

I pointed at COMMUNITY ASS EETING on the chalkboard. Sarah groaned, and Krista rolled her eyes.

“You’re all sweaty!” Krista said.

“I was on a bike ride.” I looked at my watch. “I’ve been gone for about 45 minutes.”

“Wow! Where’d you go?”

“Through the Arboretum to downtown, then up B Street to that park by the high school. There’s a path that crosses over Coventry Boulevard and leads to a greenbelt. Like a bunch of interconnected parks behind the neighborhoods in North Jeromeville.”

“Cool!”

“I’ve heard about the greenbelts,” Sarah said. “I’ve never been there, though. Was it nice?”

“Yeah. And it’s a great day to be outside. I love this weather.”

“I know! It feels like summer!”

“I have four weeks left to enjoy this weather. And now I have a new place to explore on my bike.”

“What do you mean, four weeks?” Krista asked.

“After that I’m going home for the summer.”

“Why can’t you enjoy summer at home?”

“Plumdale doesn’t have this weather. We get coastal fog at night sometimes, and it doesn’t burn off until around noon. And it doesn’t get as hot as it does here.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s hard to believe we’re almost done with the school year,” Sarah said.

“I know,” I replied. “It seemed to go by fast.”

“Are you looking forward to summer?”

“I’m not sure. I’m looking forward to no classes, but I’m going to miss all of you guys.”

“Me too! You’ll have to write to me.”

“I will. I hope to write a lot of letters this summer. I’ll try to get email over the summer too.”

“I won’t have email at home,” Sarah said.

“Me either,” Krista added.

“I feel really sweaty and stinky,” I said.

“Eww!” Sarah replied, laughing jokingly.

“I’m going to go upstairs and take a shower. I’ll see you guys later.”

“We’ll probably be going to dinner around 6. Want to come with us?” Krista asked.

“Sure!”

That day changed my life, to some extent. I went for several more bike rides in the Coventry Greenbelt and other adjacent greenbelts and parks over the next few weeks, exploring more of North Jeromeville. I found a greenbelt in West Jeromeville about a week later, and one in South Jeromeville shortly after I moved back sophomore year. Today, a quarter-century later, I have never gotten out of the habit of exploring on my bike. When I was in my early 30s, I once told someone about a 25-mile bike ride I had done one Saturday. My friend asked me how I got into cycling, and I said it just kind of happened by default when I lived in Jeromeville, and I never really stopped. I did not ride my bike very far when I was growing up in Plumdale, because Plumdale is hilly and can be cold at times. This is not exactly the best environment for cycling. It turned out that the upcoming summer of 1995 was the last summer in which I would spend the majority of the time in Plumdale, although that was not entirely related to weather or cycling.

I currently live in the suburbs south of Capital City. There are a few greenbelts around here, but not an extensive network of them like I found in Jeromeville. (Of course, Jeromevillians pay higher property taxes as a result, so there’s that.) I still do a lot of exploring on my bicycle. Once every year, I return to my cycling roots, riding my bike 28 miles from my house across the Drawbridge to Central Park in Jeromeville, where I take a break to eat the lunch I packed. After resting for a while, I continue riding around Jeromeville, riding through some of the greenbelts, as well as part of the Arboretum and my happy place along Hawkins Road. By mid-afternoon, my clothes are covered in salt left behind by dried sweat, my butt hurts, and I am exhausted, so I then take my bike on a bus to Capital City and on another bus back to my own neighborhood. My total distance for the day on one of these trips totals between 50 and 55 miles.

My bike isn’t anything fancy or expensive. For that matter, my bike isn’t the same bike I had on that day when I first explored the Coventry Greenbelt; I got a new bike in 1999 and another one in 2008, when the previous bikes broke beyond repair. And I’m not in great physical shape; I love junk food too much for that. But cycling has provided hundreds of hours and thousands of miles of outdoor recreation for me over the years. I’m writing this in January of 2020; it is cold, and I haven’t been on my bike in a few days. I don’t ride much this time of year, but I really need to. Maybe I’ll get to do that this weekend.

Coventry Greenbelt Area 5, taken in 2016 the first time I rode my bike from South Capital County to Jeromeville.

Mid-December 1994. My first finals week at UJ. (#16)

April 21, 2019December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 2 Comments

Finals week… two words that strike dread into the heart of every student. The final exam alone makes up a significant portion of the grade in most classes, and there was always a lingering fear that one bad day during the final can derail your grade for the whole class.

The schedule for finals week at the University of Jeromeville was different from the rest of the quarter. The last day of fall quarter was Friday, December 9, and finals started the following Monday. Finals week lasted six days, so the latest possible final was Saturday, December 17. Finals week was the only time during the quarter that classes could possibly fall on Saturday.

I later heard stories from people at other universities with more traditional semester-based schedules that there was a “dead week” in between regular classes and finals, a period of about a week without classes when students prepared for finals. UJ didn’t have that, with the faster pace of a three-quarter schedule. We got a weekend, and in some quarters we didn’t even get that.

The length of time I would have to study, however, varied depending on which days my finals actually were. The finals schedule didn’t match the normal daily schedule of classes. The quarterly schedule of classes, which was a booklet that we had to pick up every quarter, had a list of all possible class times and the times for the final depending on the time the regular class met. So, for example, my math class was Mondays, Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 8am, and the schedule said that finals for classes at that time were Tuesday morning at 9:00.

I had spent most of Monday sequestered in my room, studying for the math final. I reread every chapter that we covered. I looked at old homework to make sure I knew how to do the problems. I redid some of those problems. I recalled from memory the integral table in the back of the book, at least the parts that we went over. My whole day, like much of the previous weekend, was consumed with u-substitution, integration by parts, trigonometric identities, and word problems about area and volume and work done and distance traveled. I took a break for lunch, I took a few breaks to check my email and reply to a girl in Texas I’d been talking to online, and I took a break for dinner.

After I got my tray of food, I looked around the dining room to see if anyone I knew was there. I saw Rebekah and Tracy from the big room on the third floor, with another girl from a different building who I knew of as Rebekah’s friend from high school. I think her name was Christine or something like that. I walked over and asked if I could sit with them, and Rebekah said sure.

“You ready for the math final tomorrow?” Rebekah asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve been studying all day.”

“You’ll do fine. I don’t get why you’re so stressed about this.”

“Are you guys in the same math class?” Christine asked.

“Yes,” Rebekah said. “Greg has the highest grade in the class, by far. The professor even assigned this really hard extra credit assignment, and right in the middle of class, he points at Greg and says, ‘Greg, don’t even think about doing the extra credit. You have the highest grade in the class, by far, and you don’t need the extra credit.’”

“You guys got extra credit in your class?” Tracy said. “I didn’t have extra credit in any of my classes this quarter.” Tracy was right. That was the only time I had ever had the option of extra credit in any of my university classes, ever. And even though Jimmy Best specifically told me not to do the extra credit, I did start to work on it. It was a very challenging problem that appeared to require researching some advanced math, though, so I didn’t finish it.

“What are you doing the rest of the night?” Rebekah asked me.

“Studying for math.”

“Me too, for a while, but Christine and I are going to hang out too. We need a study break.”

“I’ve been taking too many breaks all day.”

“No you haven’t. You’ve been in your room all day. Just take the night off and relax.”

“I’ll have plenty of time to relax at home next week. I have a final tomorrow. And so do you.”

“I’ll be fine. And you will too.”

“I hope so.”

After dinner, I went downstairs to check my mail. I had a letter from Melissa Holmes from back home. I took it back to Building C and climbed the stairs, where I found a cluster of second-floor residents standing in the hallway next to my room. Aaron, my next-door neighbor was there, along with Caroline, Keith, and Liz and Ramon. Well, technically, Ramon lived on the third floor, but now he was spending so much time in Liz’s room that it felt like he lived there too. Ramon had even moved the sign on the door with his name on it from his actual room upstairs onto the door of room 222 next to Liz’s sign and her roommate’s.

“Some of my friends back home got us tickets to see Live,” Keith said. “It’s going to be a great show.” Live was the name of a band that had a few big hits in the mid-1990s. I knew a couple of their songs. They were catchy, although their music seemed to be very critical of organized religion, and something about that kind of bothered me now that I was going back to church regularly. But their music was good.

“Tickets for what?” Aaron asked.

“The Live concert.”

“You said that. What band are you going to see?”

“Live,” Caroline said.

“Yeah, but who is playing live?” Aaron asked.

“They’re going to see the band Live.”

“I don’t get it! What band are they going to see live?”

“Live,” Ramon said. “The name of the band is Live. You know, they sing that song ‘I Alone.’ And ‘Selling the Drama.’”

“Oh,” said Aaron, finally understanding. “I haven’t heard of them.”

“You might recognize the songs if you heard them.”

“Maybe.”

“Hey, Greg,” Liz said. “What are you doing over break?”

“Just going home with my family,” I said. “Nothing special.”

“Same for me,” Aaron said.

“I need to go study,” I said.

“I should too,” Caroline replied.

“Good luck!” Liz told me as I went back into my room. I chuckled at having witnessed a real-life version of Who’s On First. Aaron had acted like he really hadn’t heard of Live, and that he hadn’t just been messing with them.

A couple hours later, I remembered that I hadn’t read Melissa’s letter yet, so I took my final study break of the night to read it.

Dear Greg,

How is school going? I’m doing well in all of my classes so far. I have some papers to write, and then it will be time to study for finals. Are you keeping your grades up? Are you still getting the highest grade in your math class, like you always did in high school?

I loved your stories about all the people you’ve met in the dorm. I’m really glad to hear that you’re enjoying dorm life! That’s one thing I haven’t gotten to experience, since I live with relatives off campus. I’m trying to get involved in things. There is a club for pre-med students, and I have been to some of their activities.

When will you be in Plumdale for the holidays? Call me after you get home. We’ll make plans to hang out and catch up. I’d like to hear more about how you’re doing.

Melissa went on to write about her classes, what her family would be doing for the holidays, and something funny that her younger brother heard from a teacher at Plumdale High who remembered Melissa and me. It was nice that I didn’t completely lose touch with all my friends back home.

I spent the rest of my night in much the same way as that entire Monday: studying math. I eventually went to bed a little after 11, fairly confident in my mathematical abilities, but still uncertain of what to expect from the final.

“You ready?” Rebekah asked me as we waited in the hallway for the math final to start.

“I hope so,” I said. “I just don’t know what to expect. What if the questions are all really hard? Or what if he asks about things we didn’t spend a lot of time on in class? What if I run out of time?”

“Seriously, Greg. What is your problem? You’re gonna do great. We both know that you’re really good at math.”

“Thank you. I just wish I knew more of what to expect. This is my first college final.”

The final wasn’t really anything unexpected. It wasn’t super easy, but in terms of the kinds of things we had studied, it was relatively straightforward. I worked every problem thoroughly. I checked and double-checked my answers. For the problems where the answer was an algebraic expression instead of a number, I made up a number for x so I could use my calculator to see that I had done it correctly. When I was confident that I had completed the test to the best of my ability, I handed it in and left. There were about ten people still working, out of around forty or fifty in the class. Among the people in the class that I knew, Rebekah had left already, and Andrea from Building B had left just a few minutes earlier. I handed in my test and walked out of the room… no going back now.

As soon as I got back home, I started reading through all of my notes for Rise and Fall of Empires. I reread as many chapters in the book as I could, or at least skimmed through them. I went through all of my handwritten notes. The first time I read through them, I typed them on the computer, thinking that I would have to pay attention to them as I was typing, and this would help me remember. Also, that way I would have a more legible copy of the notes to read through in my later studies. Nothing eventful happened the rest of the week, just a lot of studying. And, since I didn’t have any finals on Thursday morning, I stayed up really late on Wednesday night chatting on IRC. I met this girl from Missouri who wanted me to write her back, and the girl from Texas whom I had been emailing was online.

Friday was an overcast but dry day. I got back to the building a few minutes before noon, having just finished my last final of my first quarter of college. When I got back to Building C, I put my backpack in my room, and I immediately left to go to lunch. I got a cheeseburger and a huge plate of French fries, to celebrate being through with finals. I was planning on spending the afternoon relaxing, taking a nap, walking around the dorm to tell people that I’d see them in a few weeks, and emailing the girls I’d been chatting with to tell them that I wouldn’t have access to email for a few weeks. Then, later that day, I would pack and head home. The dorm didn’t close for the holidays until Sunday at noon, but I didn’t particularly feel a need to stay for very long. I was ready to go home.

At some point during the afternoon, I decided to walk around before I did any packing. I found Taylor Santiago’s door on the third floor open, so I poked my head in and said hi.

“Hey, Greg,” Taylor said. “How’d finals go?”

“I think I did okay. I’m trying not to worry too much about it. How were yours?”

“Uhhhhh….” Taylor paused and laughed. “Well, there’s one I’m pretty sure I did well on. The others, not so much.”

“Hopefully you did better than you thought,” I said.

“What are you doing over break?”

“Just going back to Plumdale to be with family. I don’t think I’m doing anything special. One of my friends from high school who goes to San Angelo wants to hang out and catch up sometime. That’s about it.”

“Does your family do anything special for Christmas?”

“We all meet at my grandma’s house. And we’ve had a long-running tradition of playing Trivial Pursuit on Christmas.”

“Interesting. Are you guys trivia buffs?”

“Some of us are. I am. People have told me for years that I should go on Jeopardy.”

“I can see that,” Taylor said. “Our family just has a big dinner together. I think we’re hosting it this year. But a lot of people show up.”

“That’ll be nice.”

“When do you leave?”

“Later tonight, probably. I’m not really in a hurry, but I don’t want to wait too long.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said. “So in case I don’t see you again before you leave, drive safely, and have a great Christmas!”

“You too! Do you want the door open or closed?”

“Open just a little.”

“Sounds good.” I left the room, left Taylor’s door open just a little, and walked all the way down the third floor hallway to the other end of the building. I noticed that the door of room 316 was open; this was the four-person room where Rebekah and Tracy lived. I was ready to go back to my room and start packing, though, so I didn’t stop or look toward the open door. But as I was between that open door and the stairs, I heard Rebekah call out, “Hey, Greg. You got 99 percent on the calculus final.”

I stopped. I turned around. I walked to the open door of Rebekah’s room. I looked at her, and she looked back, smiling. “What did you say?” I asked.

“You got 99 percent on the calculus final.”

“But… how do you know?”

“Jimmy said he was going to post the grades this morning. Remember?”

I hadn’t remembered; in fact, I had completely forgotten. Was my grade just plastered on the wall for everyone to see? No… the grades weren’t supposed to be posted by name. “The grade printout only has us listed by ID number, right? So how did you know which one was mine?”

“I remember what you got on all of the other midterms. So I could see which one was you.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s pretty brilliant.”

“I know. I surprise myself sometimes with my brilliance,” Rebekah said sarcastically. “I was only brilliant enough to get a B-plus on the math final, though.”

“That’s not bad.”

“You know what I’m going to do differently next time?”

“What?”

“I’m going to freak out and go crazy like you did. Because maybe then I’ll get a 99 percent. It worked for you!” She laughed. I laughed back.

“Thanks,” I said. “I needed a good laugh.”

“Any time. Are you leaving soon for break?”

“Tonight. I’m going to go start packing now.”

“Well, then, have a good break! I’ll see you in a few weeks!”

“You too!”

I drove home that night, going the long way down the Valley to avoid traffic in San Tomas and the other cities that way. It was dark by the time I left Jeromeville, so I didn’t see much on the way home. I just put on some good music and sang along like I didn’t care who was watching… except I did care, because if anyone actually had been watching, I wouldn’t have been so loud, or switched back between singing high and singing an octave down, since a lot of rock vocals are above my vocal range.

I did it. I had finished one quarter of college, and I had survived my first finals week. I had learned a lot over the last three months, both classroom learning and life lessons brought on by being on my own for the first time. And although I didn’t realize it at the time, something about today has stood out in my mind for years. Rebekah had playfully pointed out that I had freaked out over a final exam in a class that I was doing very well in. I could have avoided all of that stress just by believing in myself and not letting the unknown seem so scary. Rebekah had been much more relaxed all week than I was, and she had still gotten a B-plus. If I had gotten a B-plus on that final, I still would have finished the quarter with an A because my grade was so high going into the final. Studying is important, sure, but I probably didn’t need to study quite so hard, especially in classes that came easy to me to begin with. I could have had a little more time to relax, or to spend with friends, during finals week, while still getting good grades. And the fact that I was still so obsessed with getting the absolute highest grades possible, at the expense of time with friends and possibly my own mental health, was proof that I still had many more life lessons to learn.

October 21, 1994. Good things come in threes. (#10)

March 3, 2019December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 7 Comments

Another week done. Another sunny and warm Friday afternoon. I didn’t know if it was normal to still be sunny and warm this late into October. I grew up in a different part of the state, and with the ocean and all the mountains nearby, the weather was often drastically different in different parts of the state. The weather back home in Plumdale is usually still nice in October, but I already knew that Jeromeville gets hotter in the summer than Plumdale does. Plumdale is close to the Pacific Ocean and its cold marine layer.

I got on my bike after my last class got out and pedaled down a road that passed by several tall and mysterious-looking buildings. I turned left onto another path, and stopped at a stop sign at Davis Drive, the main street that ran east-west through campus. This was the street that led past Thong Bikini Hill toward Highway 117, which was the way we entered the campus when my family and I first visited a year ago. I crossed Davis Drive, and continued on the path past a parking lot and a cluster of small buildings that reminded me of portable classrooms at elementary and high schools. I had no idea what any of the buildings I had just passed were used for. I knew that there was at least one medium-sized lecture hall in the first of the mysterious tall buildings I rode past, but I knew nothing about any of the others. They were probably laboratories of some sort.

Just past the buildings that resembled portable classrooms was the South Residential Area, buildings A through M. I parked my bike next to Building C and walked up the stairs to my room, where I planned on lying down for a bit and reading something that wasn’t a textbook. As I opened the door to the second floor hallway, I heard footsteps above me and looked up to see Rebekah Tyler coming downstairs from the third floor. She and I were in the same math class, and we had gotten our first midterm back today.

The concept of “midterm” confused me a little. The word “midterm” suggests an exam in the middle of the term. However, many of my classes at UJ had two midterms, sometimes even three, so they did not always come at the same time in the term. Also, because of UJ’s three-quarter schedule, the term was only 11 weeks long including finals, so in many classes there was a test of some sort every three weeks or so. The word “midterm” at UJ was used for any test that was not a final exam.

Many of the lower-division mathematics classes at UJ were not taught by the regular full-time professors. Some were taught by lecturers, who were hired only to teach and not do research. Some were taught by Visiting Research Assistant Professors, who were in Jeromeville only for a temporary time period and often did not speak English as a first language. And some were taught by graduate students, like my instructor this quarter, a young guy probably no more than 30 years old working on a Ph.D. His name was Jimmy Best, which is a great name no matter what your job is. He made a typical teacher joke on the first day of school when he said that he was the Best teacher ever. Today, when he passed back the midterm, he announced that the highest grade had been 99 out of 100.

“Hey, Greg,” Rebekah said, seeing me downstairs. “Let me guess. You were the one who got the 99 out of 100 on the midterm.”

“Yes, I was,” I said. Apparently the reputation I had at Plumdale High for being good at math followed me to Building C, although being that we were all Interdisciplinary Honors Program students, I figured a lot of students around here were like me. “How’d you do?”

“90.”

“That’s not bad.”

“I have another midterm right now for my engineering class.”

“Good luck!”

After spending a few hours reading, writing emails while staring out the window at the beautiful day outside, and playing a game on the computer, I walked down to the dining hall. Tonight’s special was spaghetti and meatballs, which I spooned onto my plate. I looked around for a seat. I didn’t see any of my friends around. I started to walk toward an empty table, but then I noticed that a girl sat by herself at the table next to the one I was walking toward. She had straight light brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, blue eyes, and she wore a striped shirt and tan pants. I knew this girl. Well, I didn’t exactly know her, I didn’t know her name, but I had seen her before. She was in my math class.

“May I sit here?” I asked, gesturing to the chair across from her.

“Sure!” she said.

“We’re in the same math class, aren’t we?” I asked.

“Yeah. I’m Andrea.” She pronounced it with the stress on the first syllable.

“I’m Greg,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too.”

“How’d you do on the midterm?”

“I got 86,” she said. “I thought I did pretty well, but there was one question I just couldn’t remember anything about at all.”

“Aww,” I said. “I was the one who got 99.”

“I figured,” she replied. I didn’t understand this. How does someone I just met know that I’m the one who got the highest score on the midterm?

“What’s your major?” I asked Andrea.

“Math. I want to teach high school math.”

“Good for you,” I said. “I don’t think I could ever be a teacher. I’d get tired of the politics involved in the education system.”

“I know what you mean,” she replied. “I just know I want to teach. I’m just hoping all that stuff doesn’t bother me.”

“Makes sense.”

“What’s your major?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” I said. Saying that always felt wrong, like this was something I should know by now. “I know I’m good at math, and physics, and chemistry. I’m kind of thinking one of those, although math is the only one of those classes I’m taking right now.”

“What about engineering? Are you considering that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll see.” What I didn’t tell Andrea, and what I was a little ashamed to tell any of the engineering majors in IHP, was that I really didn’t know what an engineer was, and that was the main reason I never considered it as a major. I grew up very sheltered in a blue-collar part of the state where not many people have advanced degrees. My mom worked in an office, and my dad fixed and maintained agricultural equipment. Jobs like engineer didn’t really come up in my very limited world view. “Where are you from?” I asked.

“Irving,” she said. “Near San Tomas.”

“Oh, yeah, I know where that is. I’m from Plumdale. In Santa Lucia County.”

“I know Santa Lucia. I’m not sure I know exactly where Plumdale is.”

“In the hills to the north. It’s not very big.”

“Which building are you in here?”

“C.”

“I’m in B. I know a few people in Building C. Liz Williams? And Pete, the guy with the beard, I don’t remember his last name? They’re in C, right?”

“Yeah. Pete Green. I know both of them. Liz is just down the hall from me.”

Andrea was finished with dinner by then. “I have to get going,” she said. “It was nice meeting you! I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah. Have a great weekend!”

“You too!”

After I finished eating, about five minutes later, I walked downstairs to the mail room and noticed an envelope in my mailbox. I read the return address and smiled. It was from Melissa, my friend from high school who lived down south now. I had written her during the first week of school, and now she had written back. This was the first time I had heard from any of my high school friends.

Sarah and Krista from the first floor of Building C were walking toward the dining hall as I walked in the opposite direction. “Hi, Greg,” Sarah said, smiling. “You got a letter!”

“I did. It’s from a good friend from high school.”

“Good! Did you eat already? You want to come to dinner with us?”

“I just finished eating. Sorry I missed you guys.”

“That’s ok! We’ll see you back in the building.”

“Yeah. Have a good dinner.”

I walked back to my room and opened the letter. It was mostly just the usual stuff. Melissa told me about her classes. She told me what it was like living with her grandmother and asked if I had made a lot of friends yet. She apologized for missing Homecoming, saying that she wanted to go but she ended up having a paper to write that weekend and having to do something with her relatives. She mentioned that her family was taking her out to dinner this weekend for her birthday. I made a mental note that I had forgotten Melissa’s birthday, but now I could write her back with a belated birthday card.

After I read the letter, I walked upstairs, but I walked all the way up to the third floor because there was something I was curious about. The door to room 316 was open a little, so I knocked and stuck my head inside.

“Hi, Greg,” Rebekah said. “What’s up?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“I just saw Andrea from our math class in the dining hall. How is it that everyone knows it was me who got the highest score on the midterm?”

Rebekah laughed. “Probably because you’re always the one participating in class and answering questions. Everyone else is still half asleep at eight in the morning.”

“I’d never thought of that,” I said. “You’re probably right.”

“I wish I was as lively as you are in the morning.”

“I guess that’s just how I am.”

I went back to my room a few minutes later and looked out the window at the sky. which was now quickly getting dark, but there was no fog coming in as there usually was in coastal Plumdale at this time. Life was so different now compared to a month ago. College is different than high school. Jeromeville is different from Plumdale. But tonight I felt at peace. I did very well on my first math test. I finally heard from one of my old friends. And I had a new friend who lived in a different building… and not just any new friend, it was a cute girl who liked math. It is often said that good things come in threes, and I was three-for-three today.