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.

December 24-25, 1995. I really wish Mom would ask me first before volunteering me for things. (#64)

October 7, 2020December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 9 Comments

“Time to open presents,” I said as I put my dinner plate in the sink.

“First I have to do the dishes, then I have to go upstairs and finish wrapping them,” Mom replied. “I told you, I’d tell you when I was ready. Go watch Jeopardy! or something.”

“Mark is watching basketball.”

“Then go watch basketball with Mark.”

“I don’t care about those two teams,” I said, climbing the stairs to my bedroom. I turned on the computer. My parents had no Internet service, so the only way I could use the Internet was to dial the same number I used to connect to the Internet in Jeromeville. Mom told me that it was okay to check my email a couple of times per day, but I did not want to tie up the phone line for hours at a time with an expensive long distance call, so I was not chatting on IRC or reading Usenet newsgroups from my parents’ house.

I listened as the modem made the sounds associated with checking my email. It began with a standard dial tone, followed by the tones of the number I had to call to connect to the University of Jeromeville network, but this time there were eleven tones, not seven, since I was calling from outside the area code. A series of hisses, clicks, high-pitched beeps, whirs, and other unintelligible sounds followed this, until I saw a progress bar indicating that my messages were downloading. When the messages had all downloaded, about a minute later, the computer clicked and disconnected. I had last checked my email when I woke up this morning, and four new messages had come in since then. Three of them were jokes that people had forwarded me from someone else, and I had seen all of them before. The fourth message, which was sent early this afternoon, I paid more attention to. It was from Brittany, a girl in Texas who was one of the first friends I made on the Internet, a year a half earlier when this computer was brand new. This was the first I had heard from Brittany in about a month.

From: swimgirl17@aolnet.com
To: gjdennison@jeromeville.edu
Date: Sun, 24 Dec 1995 01:44 -0600
Subject: Re: hi

Greg! I’m so sorry I haven’t been writing. I’ve been really busy with school. Classes this year have been so much more work than high school was. I feel like I did ok on all my finals though. Studying for finals pretty much took up all of the last few weeks. But now I can catch my breath until spring semester starts. How did your finals go? Are you back with your family for Christmas?

–Brittany

I used to get emails from Brittany just about every day for most of the last school year, my freshman year at UJ and Brittany’s senior year of high school. But over the last several months, I had heard from her less and less as her life got busier. I clicked Reply and began typing.

From: “Gregory Dennison” <gjdennison@jeromeville.edu>
To: swimgirl17@aolnet.com
Subject: Re: hi

Hi! It’s good to hear from you! I’m glad you did well on finals. What are you taking next semester? Do you have any fun plans over break? Do you know yet where you want to transfer after you finish community college?

I think I did well on my finals too. I only had three this year. I’ve been at my parents’ house for about a week. We’re going to open presents later tonight. We always open presents the night before Christmas, because the night before my 9th birthday, I was so excited to open presents that I couldn’t sleep, and I kept Mom awake all night. Ever since, so that I’d be able to sleep when I was a kid, we always open birthday and Christmas presents the night before instead. Tomorrow, we’re going to church, and then my grandma’s house in Gabilan, the next town over. My aunt and uncle and cousins will be there, so we’ll have more presents to open.

My mom also wants to go see my grandma’s neighbors. Their daughter is a senior in high school, she’s taking physics, and Mom volunteered me to tutor her. I don’t particularly want to spend my break doing homework with some stranger. I really wish Mom would ask me first before volunteering me for things. That’s how I ended up with the summer job at the bookstore. But at the same time, maybe it won’t be so bad, because I get to hang out with a girl.

“I can’t find bows,” Mom called from her bedroom. “Do you care if one of your presents doesn’t have a bow?”

I minimized the window in which I was typing my message to Brittany and opened the door. “Mom, I tell you every year, we look at the wrapping paper for like two minutes and then tear it off. I don’t care what the wrapping looks like.”

“Well, I want it to look nice. Gifts are supposed to have bows.”

“I really don’t care.”

“If you really don’t care, then, I’m done. Are you ready to open presents?”

“Sure.”

I saved my unfinished message to Brittany and turned the computer off, following Mom downstairs. I would have more to write after I was done opening presents.

“I hope this is the one you asked for,” Mom said as Mark opened a box. Inside was a University of North Carolina Tar Heels basketball jersey.

“Yeah, this is it,” Mark said, admiring his present. “Thank you!” Mark lived and breathed basketball, and he had favorite players on many different teams as well as several favorite college basketball teams, none of which were anywhere near our house in Plumdale. I preferred to be a fan of local teams, but most of the top college basketball programs were on the other side of the country; North Carolina, for example.

I grabbed a box with my name on it next; from the size and weight, I guessed that it continued clothing. I pulled out a gray shirt with red writing and tan highlights: BAY CITY CAPTAINS, it said. “Thank you,” I replied. The Bay City Captains were my favorite pro football team, the only sports team that I followed closely that year. The Captains won last year’s championship and, despite having lost the final game of the season that morning, would advance to the playoffs again this year. I made a note to myself not to mention the Captains shirt when I finished my email to Brittany, given what I knew about her football allegiances.

We continued opening presents. I got a new pair of jeans, and some blank audio cassettes, for making copies of CDs and listening to them in the car. My car had no CD player. Mom handed me one final gift, a box about the size of a book, but much less heavy. “You didn’t ask for this, but I saw it and figured I had to get it for you,” Mom explained.

“Ha! This looks hilarious!” I shouted as I tore the wrapping paper and read the label underneath. It was a computer game, Beavis and Butthead: Virtual Stupidity. I read the description on the back of the box. It was an adventure game; the player controlled Beavis and Butthead as they walked around the streets of Highland, making mischief and trying to impress Todd, the local delinquent who the boys misguidedly admired. But then I saw something on the label that made me feel panic mixed with disappointment. “I can’t play this,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Mom asked.

“It’s for Windows 95.”

“Oh… and that means there’s no way it’ll run on your computer?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Can you get Windows 95 for your computer?”

“That would be expensive. And my computer isn’t very powerful; it would probably run very slowly.”

“I’m sorry,” Mom said. “I didn’t even think to look.”

You never do, I thought. I considered bringing up the time Mom completely missed the “explicit lyrics” warning label when she got Aunt Jane one of Adam Sandler’s comedy albums a few Christmases ago, but I decided not to say anything.

“We’ve been meaning to get a computer for us,” Mom continued. “So you can play it here when you come home for spring break. Right?”

“Yeah. That works.”

After we were finished opening presents, I went upstairs. I was disappointed that I would not be able to play the Beavis and Butthead game, but I tried not to let my disappointment show. Christmas was always stressful for Mom, and I already felt a little frustrated with Mom because of the way she had volunteered me to tutor Monica Sorrento in physics without asking me. I turned on the computer and finished my email to Brittany.

We just finished opening presents. Mom got me the Beavis and Butthead computer game, but it requires Windows 95 and I don’t have that. I feel bad, because Mom is going to think I’m upset with her. When I was 13, my computer was broken, and my presents that year were all computer games, and I got so upset and threw a tantrum because I couldn’t play with any of my Christmas presents. I feel terrible, because now Mom always has to apologize over and over again if any of us asked for something for Christmas and she wasn’t able to find it, or if something she got wasn’t quite right. I’ve told her every year I’m more mature now and she doesn’t have to worry about it, but I think I traumatized her for life.

What are you doing for Christmas? Have a great day!

gjd

The next morning, as we drove to church, Mom was rattling off a bunch of things about people whom we might see at church this morning. “The Lusks all went to midnight mass, so we won’t see them, but they’ll be at Grandma and Grandpa’s house this afternoon,” Mom said.

“Good,” I replied. Jane Lusk was my mom’s younger sister, and seeing their family, particularly my cousins Rick and Miranda, was always a highlight of Christmas for me.

“And the Sorrentos usually go to Mass first thing in the morning. But we’re still going over there this afternoon.” I nodded silently, prompting Mom to ask, “Right?”

“Yes,” I said. I did not want to make the situation worse, but I felt like I really needed to speak up. “But I really do wish you would stop volunteering me for things without asking me first,” I said.

Mom paused, taken off guard by my question. “Are you saying you don’t want to go see Monica Sorrento today?”

“No. It wouldn’t be nice to back out now.” Besides, I thought, it isn’t every day that I get to talk to girls, but I did not say that part out loud.

“Okay,” Mom said, sounding bothered. “But when have I volunteered you to do things before?”

“When you told Paula McCall that I could work at the bookstore over the summer.”

“You were home, you had nothing to do, and you even said you should get a job.”

“I know, but maybe that wasn’t the job I wanted. I mean, I probably would have said yes if you had asked me, but you still should have asked me first.” Mom did not reply to that, so I continued. “And remember fourth grade, when most of my class was mean to me, and you invited all four of the kids who weren’t mean to me over for play dates.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted. I was trying to help you make friends.”

“I wanted to make friends, but I wanted them to be nicer to me at school. I didn’t want them at our house. And in sixth grade, when we had to babysit Jonathan Hawley once a week because you thought I might want to play with someone from my class. He was so annoying!”

After a few seconds of silence, Mom replied, “He was annoying, wasn’t he. I’m sorry.”

“Just ask me first next time you tell someone you think I’d like to do something.”

“Okay. I promise I will.”

“Thank you.”

“And you’re sure you’re still okay with going to the Sorrentos today?”

“Yes.”

After church, we exchanged presents from the rest of the family at my grandparents’ house. Grandma got me new socks, and Aunt Jane got me another Bay City Captains shirt, a little different from the one I had opened at my parents’ house. Rick’s present from Mom was a Captains hat that looked very similar to my shirt. I suspected that Mom and Aunt Jane had bought all of the Captains merchandise together when they went shopping together earlier in the week.

After about another hour of sitting around eating and playing games, Mom asked if it was okay to go next door to the Sorrentos’ house now. “Okay,” I said. I got up and followed Mom next door, waiting nervously on the porch behind Mom as she rang the doorbell. The Sorrentos were a large family, and they lived in a large two-story house. They had five girls; Monica was 17, the oldest, and the youngest was in elementary school. Mom had known the Sorrentos for years; Mom and Aunt Jane and Mr. Sorrento and his sister all went to high school together.

A few seconds later, I heard footsteps and the clicking of a door being unlocked; the door opened, with Mrs. Sorrento on the other side. “Hi, Peggy! Hi, Greg! Merry Christmas!” she said. I could not remember if I had ever actually met Mrs. Sorrento, but everyone at Our Lady of Peace Church seemed to know who I was, because they knew Mom.

“Hi,” I said.

“Monica is in her room. I’ll go tell her you’re here,” Mrs. Sorrento said, walking down the hallway. I stood awkwardly, staring at Mom and looking around at the part of the Sorrentos’ house that I could see from the doorway, until Mrs. Sorrento returned with Monica about a minute later.

“Hi,” Monica said, smiling. Turning to me, she said, “Nice to meet you,” and shook my hand. I returned the handshake. Monica was short and thin, with curly brown hair and brown eyes.

“You needed help with physics?” Mom said to Monica. “Greg always liked physics.”

“There was something I didn’t understand,” Monica explained, “but I went in to talk to the teacher about it. I think I get it now.”

So Mom dragged me all the way here to tutor Monica in physics, and now she says she does not need a tutor. Now I really did not understand the point of all this. “That’s good,” I said to Monica. Trying to think of something to say, I added, “I had a bad physics test last year. High school physics was easy for me, so I didn’t study very hard. But I started going to my professor’s office hours, and I studied really hard for the next one, and that time I had the highest grade out of the whole class, about 200 people.”

“Wow,” Monica replied. “I know that’s normal for you, but 200 people in a class sounds kind of crazy.”

“Yeah.”

“So how do you like Jeromeville?”

“I like it. It’s a huge school, but I’ve found smaller communities to get involved with. That’s important.”

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about colleges, but I’m going to stay home and go to Hartman for the first two years. I’m probably going to apply to Jeromeville, though. And U of the Bay, and Capital State, and Central Tech. I know those for sure.”

“That sounds good.”

“Greg applied to Central Tech too,” Mom added. “But not Capital State. Right?”

“Yeah.”

We continued making small talk with Monica and Mrs. Sorrento for about another fifteen minutes. Mom and Mrs. Sorrento talked about people from church whom I did not know, and Monica and I talked about school and classes. Mr. Sorrento and two of Monica’s sisters also appeared to say hi.

“Are you ready to go back to Grandma’s house?” Mom asked.

“I think so,” I replied. Turning to Monica, I added, “And you’ll let me know if you need help with physics or anything like that?”

“Sure!” Monica answered. “Let me get your contact information.” She went back to her room and returned with a pen and paper, on which I wrote my address, phone number, and email.

“Can I get yours too?” I asked. “Well, I know your address. Do you have email?”

“My dad does. If you write me there, he’ll pass it on to me.” Monica wrote her phone number and Mr. Sorrento’s email on the piece of paper, tore that part of the paper off, and gave it to me. I put it in my pocket.

“Thank you,” I said. “It was nice meeting you.”

“Nice meeting you too!” Monica said, smiling.

“Thanks for coming over,” Mrs. Sorrento added. “It was good seeing you guys.”

“You too,” Mom said.

As soon as we were out of earshot, walking back up to Grandma’s front door, Mom said, “See? That wasn’t so bad.”

“I know,” I said.

“And I promise in the future, I’ll ask you before I tell someone you’ll do something.”

“Thank you. Can we just drop that now and enjoy the rest of Christmas?”

“Sure.”

I still thought it was a little strange that Mom seemed to make such a point of Monica needing help with physics, but then Monica told me she did not even need help. I could think of two possible explanations for how this happened: either Mom misunderstood whatever Mrs. Sorrento had originally said about Monica not doing well in physics, or the physics thing was entirely made up and Mom was just trying to help me meet girls. Either one was very possible, knowing Mom.

Monica and I kept in touch off and on for the rest of that school year, and I saw her in person occasionally on future visits to my grandmother’s house over the years. We never did become close lifelong friends, nor did anything else happen between us, but that was just part of the cycle of people meeting each other and growing apart naturally.

Since that day, though, Mom really did get better about not telling people I would do things for them without asking me first. When situations like that came up in the future, Mom would say things like “I’ll ask Greg” instead of “Greg would love to do that.” And that was what I really wanted, to be treated like an adult and be allowed to make my own decisions. Being a parent and watching children grow up is a difficult transition, but a willingness to communicate and listen helps everyone get through it.

October 3-8, 1995. Trying something new. (#54)

July 8, 2020December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 28 Comments

Every once in a while, an event leaves such an impression on the mind of those living through it that everyone remembers exactly where they were when it happened. My first chemistry lab of fall quarter was one of those moments. It was a Tuesday morning. About an hour after class started, while we were busy measuring aqueous solutions in graduated cylinders and pouring them into Erlenmeyer flasks, Deb, the TA in charge of the lab section, announced that it was time to turn on the radio, because of the big announcement that was expected today. A hush slowly settled over the twenty-four students in the lab as Deb turned on an AM news station broadcasting out of Capital City. Reception was not great in the basement of the chemistry building, but it was audible. After a few minutes of analysis and speculation, the broadcast switched to a live feed on location.

My class became even more hushed as a new voice began reciting the words that nearly everyone in the nation had been waiting sixteen months to hear: “We, the jury, in the above entitled action, find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder…”

A few of my classmates gasped. This was not what they expected to hear, nor was it what I expected. O.J. Simpson was a retired football player, actor, and television personality who had been accused of murdering his second ex-wife and her male friend. For well over a year, news related to the murder and trial had dominated the media, both as serious journalism and source material for comedy. All the evidence suggested that O.J. was guilty, but apparently his team of celebrity lawyers created doubt in the minds of the jurors to get him acquitted. To this day, no one else has ever been charged with the murders.

When my lab finished, I rode my bike north on Colt Avenue, turned right on Shelley Avenue, left on East Quad Avenue, and parked my bike by the campus bookstore, across from the Death Star building. A meme from the 2010s depicted a man sitting at a table with a sign reading “I WILL ARGUE WITH ANYONE ABOUT ANYTHING,” and the first time I saw that meme, I recognized right away that the photograph was taken right here on the University of Jeromeville Quad. A wide pedestrian sidewalk ran between the north edge of the Quad and the Memorial Union building, which contained the bookstore. A series of tables, resembling picnic tables made of plastic coated metal mesh but with benches only on one side, lined this sidewalk. Typically, student clubs and organizations would use these tables for information and recruiting; someone from the organization would sit on the bench, facing the Memorial Union and the walkway, with a sign advertising the group to students who walk by.

Unlike the man from the meme, I was not at this table to argue with anyone about anything. Sister Mary Rose was sitting at the table, with the sign for the Newman Center, a stack of pamphlets, and a clipboard. “Hi, Greg,” she said. “Thanks for signing up to work today.”

“No problem,” I said. “So what do I do? Just tell people who we are and hand these out?”

“Yes. Give these out to interested students,” she said, gesturing toward a stack of pamphlets. “And have them write their contact information on this clipboard if they want us to contact them.”

“I can do that,” I said. I looked through one of the pamphlets. It explained briefly about the concept of the Newman Center’s ministry to Catholic students at secular universities, along with a three-sentence biography of our namesake, 19th-century British theologian and priest John Henry Newman. The pamphlet listed the times of our Sunday Masses and other weekly activities.

A male student with bushy brown hair and a backpack walked past the table, slowing down and looking at the sign. “Hi,” Sister Mary Rose said. “Can I help you?”

“I was just wondering what this was,” he replied.

“We are the Newman Center. We are a Catholic student community. We have Mass every Sunday, and we have social activities too.”

I handed the student a flyer, and he looked through it. I was curious what made him stop at our table. Does he come from a Catholic background? Is he just interested in Catholicism? Was he just being friendly? I did not ask. I did not feel comfortable asking a personal question like that.

“Thanks,” the student said as he walked away.

“Is there anything I should be saying to people who come to the table?” I asked after the student was out of earshot.

“Not really,” Sister Mary Rose explained. “Just be friendly, and answer any questions they might have, if you can.”

“Sounds good.”

“So are you done with class today?

“No. I have physics lab at 2. I had chemistry lab this morning.”

“Two labs on the same day.”

“Yeah. That’s all I have today. This morning in chem the TA stopped the class so we could all listen to the O.J. verdict. I thought that was kind of funny.”

“I heard he was found not guilty.”

“Yeah. I wasn’t expecting that. Of course, I haven’t been following the trial too closely. I’m just sick of hearing about it.”

“I know what you mean.”

Another student walked up to our table, a girl with dark hair. “Hi,” I said, holding a pamphlet. “Would you like information about the Newman Center?”

“Sure,” the girl replied, taking the pamphlet from me and flipping through the pages. “Are you the only Catholic church in Jeromeville?”

“There is also St. John’s. They are a more traditional Catholic parish. The Newman Center is specifically geared toward students, although there are some adults who attend our Masses as well.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Would you like to sign up for our contact list? We can send you more information.”

“Sure,” she said, writing her name, phone number, and email on the clipboard.

“Thanks,” I said. “Have a great day.”

“You too!”

“That was good,” Sister Mary Rose told me as the girl walked off. “Are you looking at getting more involved with the Newman Center in any other ways this year?”

“Well,” I said, “Danielle keeps trying to get me to sing. I’m going to come to choir practice tomorrow and see what happens.”

“Good for you! I think you’ll love it.”

“I’m kind of self-conscious about singing in front of people. But a choir seems less difficult than singing solo. And I need to get more involved in things. I don’t see my friends as often now that I live alone.”

“Danielle Coronado invited you to practice? You two know each other besides just church, right?”

“Yes. She lived right down the hall from me in the dorm last year.”

“I think you’ll like it. I’ve noticed you have a pretty good voice.”

“Thank you.”

The next evening, after I finished my Hungry-Man Salisbury steak frozen dinner, I got in the car and drove south on Andrews Road. I turned left on 15th Street and right on B Street toward downtown, then zigzagged the grid streets to the Newman Center, located in an old brick building on C Street between 5th and 6th. I walked into the chapel, where a group of about ten people stood on the stage that had once been the altar before the chapel had been remodeled at some point.

“Greg!” Danielle called out. “You made it!”

“I did,” I said.

“Welcome,” a girl with light brown hair said, in a strong voice that she projected in a way that made me think she probably had a background in music or theater. I knew her to say hi to, her name was Claire, but I did not know her well. “Danielle told me you would be coming. We were just picking out what songs we’re going to sing this week. Grab a songbook.”

I looked around the room as I picked up a copy of the same songbook we used in Mass. I recognized a few faces here besides Danielle and Claire, but the only one I knew by name was Matt Jones. He was a tall boy of mixed white and Asian heritage, and we had met before because our families knew each other back home. He had graduated from St. Luke’s High School in Gabilan, the medium-sized city next to the rural community of Plumdale where I lived.

There was one other new person that night, a freshman named Phil with messy hair and stubble. The others introduced themselves to Phil and me. There was a cute little redhead girl whom I had noticed before; her name was Sabrina. An olive-skinned girl named Heather. A guy with dark hair and a toothy smile named Ryan; Matt said that he and Ryan went to high school together. And a lot of other people who I did not remember at first, including two who looked too old to be students. Something looked vaguely familiar about Ryan; I was not sure what it was, but if Ryan and Matt were friends in high school, then Ryan and I grew up near each other, so we may have crossed paths in the past. Or maybe he just looked familiar because I had seen him around church last year.

Each week, we had to choose four songs: one for the opening, one during the offering, one during Communion, and one for the end of Mass. Claire passed around a list of songs to choose from, songs that would go well with that week’s Scripture readings. In addition to these four songs, we also sang a responsorial based on one of the Psalms, in which we would sing the verse and the congregation would sing the chorus together. The Catholic Mass also included a number of other songs used for specific parts of the service. When I was growing up, these would typically be the same from week to week, but twice a year or so the songs would change to a different set of music saying basically the same lyrics. The Newman Center seemed to do things the same way.

The songs we chose for this coming week were all mostly familiar to me, as were the songs for the other Mass parts. For the ones I did not know well, I could read music well enough that the tune and rhythm came back to me as we were singing. Some of these songs I knew before I started attending Mass at Newman. “I know this one really well,” I said to Danielle, who was next to me, when we started singing “Cry of the Poor.” “We used to sing it at my church back home.”

“Mine too,” Danielle replied. “We use a lot of the same music here as my family’s church.”

After we practiced all the songs, as practice was winding down, the girl who had earlier introduced herself as Heather approached me. “Hey, Greg?” she asked. “Danielle told me you live at Las Casas. Is that right?”

“Yeah,” I said, not entirely sure where she was going with this. Was she stalking me? Did she know someone who needed a roommate, and she knew I lived alone, and now I was going to have to make a big decision?

“I do too. Might you be interested in carpooling?”

“Sure,” I said, relieved that her proposal was nothing to be afraid of. Driving to church with a neighbor was not scary.

“Let me find a piece of paper, and I’ll write down my phone number. And my apartment number.”

“Is this just for choir practice on Wednesdays? Or do you want to carpool Sundays too?”

“Sure. We can do Sundays too.” Heather found a piece of paper, wrote her information, and gave it to me. Her full name was Heather Escamilla, and she was in apartment number 239. I tore off enough of the paper to write my own contact information, which I gave it to her.

“Can you carpool this Sunday?” I asked. “Want me to drive?”

“Sure!”

The following Sunday morning, Heather knocked on my door a little after 10:30, in plenty of time to get to the church for 11:00 Mass. I had to get there on time now, since I was actually part of the service, although I was not usually one to arrive late in the first place.

“Hey,” I said after opening the door. “You ready?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Which car is yours?”

“That one,” I said as I gestured to the red Ford Bronco parked outside my apartment. “Well, technically not mine. My parents own it. You know.”

“Yeah.” As we pulled out of the parking lot, Heather asked, “So where are you from? Are your parents around here?”

“No. Plumdale. Near Gabilan and Santa Lucia.”

“Oh, okay. How far is that from here?”

“I can get home in less than three hours if traffic is good.”

“That’s not bad. I’m from down south, near San Angelo. On a good day it takes six hours.”

“Sounds right. What year are you, and what are you studying?”

“I’m a junior. Psych major. And you’re a sophomore? Danielle said you and her were in the same dorm last year?”

“Yeah. She lived one door down across the hall from me. And I’m a math major.”

“Eww. Math and I don’t get along.”

“That’s what a lot of people say.”

“I’m sure they do. Did you have a good weekend?”

“Yeah, but it was boring. Went for a bike ride yesterday.” I did not tell her that I had almost cried Friday night because I was so lonely.

“That sounds nice,” Heather said. “Mel and I were at a party on Friday. It was, well, interesting. You know.”

“Mel?”

“Melanie. From choir. You met her on Wednesday.”

“Oh, okay. I still don’t know everyone.”

When we arrived at church, the building was mostly empty. The early service had left already. We walked to the other musicians; the guitarists were turning their guitars, the pianist was practicing, and the singers were looking through pages of sheet music. Heather started talking to a thin girl with medium brown hair whom I remembered seeing on Wednesday; I thought this was probably Melanie.

“Hey, Greg,” Danielle said, noticing that I had arrived. “You ready?”

“I guess. I’m a little nervous.”

“There’s no reason to be. Just sing like you do when you’re at your seat. You’ll be fine.”

Danielle was right. I just sang, and it was fine. We sounded good. There were enough of us on stage that my voice did not stand out, so even though I was a little self-conscious, I had no need to be. The entire Mass went over smoothly from the perspective of the choir: the opening song, the Kyrie and Gloria, the Alleluia before the Gospel reading, the song for the offering (this was Cry of the Poor), the short songs between the priest’s prayers while preparing the bread and wine, the Lamb of God, a song during Communion, and a closing song. Even in my state of near-perpetual self-consciousness, I thought I sounded good, and all of us as a group sounded good as well.

“So are you going to keep coming back to choir?” Claire asked after Mass was over.

“I think so,” I replied.

“Great! I’ll see you Wednesday then.”

“Sounds good!” Turning to Heather, I asked, “Are you ready?”

“Yeah. Just a minute.”

I said goodbye to Danielle, Matt, Phil, Ryan, and the others while I waited for Heather. She was talking to Melanie. After a minute, Heather and I walked back to the car, and I drove us back to our apartment complex.

I was definitely planning to keep coming to choir practice indefinitely. With me living alone this year, I would need to work harder to make friends and keep the friends I made last year. That meant it was time to get involved in more activities. With choir at Newman, I was already making new friends after just one week, in addition to staying in touch a good friend from last year.

After I got home, Heather walked back to her apartment, and I lay on my bed, humming Cry of the Poor. Songs get stuck in my head easily. The Lord hears the cry of the poor, the song says. Although I knew many others had lives worse than mine, sometimes I felt poor, crying out to the Lord. Maybe he finally heard me. Maybe he gave me this opportunity to sing at church so I would be more connected both to the church community and to a group of friends. And in the process, I was serving my community. Maybe this was what I needed to get out of my lonely funk.

April 28-May 2, 1995. The first physics midterm. (#36)

December 23, 2019December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 13 Comments

I sat in math class on a Friday morning, listening to the instructor talk about finding derivatives of vector functions. It seemed simple enough… just write the vector components of the function and find the derivative of each component. When I registered for classes, the name “vector analysis” made me think the class would be difficult, especially since I wasn’t entirely sure what a vector was, but so far the class had been easy.

I wished that had been true of all of my classes.

After math class, I walked to the Memorial Union. I only had an hour between math and physics class, and I had finally figured out that I did not have to go all the way back to my dorm room between classes. This quarter, when I had a gap of an hour or two between classes, I would go find a table at the Memorial Union and read or work on homework. I tried to do math homework today, but I was having a hard time concentrating, dreading what was coming in an hour when I got to physics class.

Physics was in a small building called Ross Hall. This building had a lecture hall of about 200 seats on one side and another lecture hall of about 100 seats on the other side. Inexplicably, the two lecture halls were called room 55 and room 66, with 66 being the larger one. I still didn’t understand how rooms were numbered in some of these buildings. Upstairs from the two lecture halls were 12 small laboratory rooms with numbers in the 150s and 160s. That numbering was consistent with most buildings on the University of Jeromeville campus, with the room numbers being 100 greater than the room numbers below them, but I still didn’t understand why they didn’t just start with something like 1 and 101. I’m a numbers guy. I think about these things.

UJ offered three different physics classes: Physics 1, a very general class that counted as a general education requirement for non-science majors; Physics 7, focusing on concepts and procedures, designed for majors like biology and pre-med; and Physics 9, teaching all the details and theory and mathematics behind general physics, for students of engineering, the physical sciences, and mathematics. I still hadn’t declared a major, but all of the majors I had been considering, including physics itself, required this last physics class, so taking this class was a given for me. Unlike most year-long classes, Physics 9 started in spring quarter, and continued through the following winter, April to March, so that incoming freshmen would have two quarters to learn calculus before beginning physics.

Physics was easy in high school. Most science classes were easy for me. Science, like mathematics, followed consistent logical rules. In real life, there were scientific concepts that didn’t follow these rules, because humanity’s knowledge of the universe was incomplete, but those were not the kinds of things taught in high school.

Because physics was so easy for me in high school, I expected physics to continue to be easy in college. My professor, Dr. Collins, taught one thing differently than the way it was in the book, and I didn’t quite understand it the way he explained it, but I understood what was in the book just fine. I had a midterm last Monday, and I expected it to be easy, because physics was easy.

Expectations are often different from reality, and this was why I had felt so discouraged after actually taking the physics midterm. This was also why I felt a sense of dread walking into 66 Ross today, because my graded midterm was there, waiting for me to go pick it up.

The lobby for the lecture hall had a long wooden shelf where instructors and graders could leave exams to be passed back. The shelf was only a couple inches deep, with vertical compartments to hold papers so that students could flip through the papers looking for theirs. The papers were separated alphabetically. I found D and looked for Dennison. I nervously removed my paper from the shelf, reassuring myself that it couldn’t possibly be that bad.

It was that bad.

It was even worse than that bad, actually.

I walked into the lecture hall and took a seat in the back. I felt too ashamed to sit any closer to the front. I felt like I didn’t even belong at this university getting grades like this.

54 out of 120. That’s less than 50%, and in the high school grading method I was used to, less than 50% is an F.

I looked through my paper to see what I got wrong exactly. As I looked through the questions, I noticed something that sunk my already low confidence through the floor.

The grader had counted incorrectly. My grade was actually 44 out of 120. That was certainly failing.

Dr. Collins began speaking from the front of the classroom. “Your midterms are in the lobby, if you haven’t gotten them yet,” he said. “I curved them like this.” He put a transparency on the overhead projector indicating what score corresponded to what letter grade. Apparently I wasn’t the only student who did poorly. 54 out of 120 was being curved to a C-minus. 44 out of 120 was still curved to an F, though. I wasn’t sure how the curve worked exactly. I never did figure out if there was a set formula which instructors used to curve grades, or if they just looked at how everyone did and separated them into five letter grade groups.

This entire quarter was about mechanics: velocity, acceleration, force, torque, energy, momentum, that kind of stuff. It seemed pretty simple. But somehow, I just didn’t understand what to do with the information given on the test. A lot of the problems weren’t like the homework, and Dr. Collins had included one problem, out of six total, which entirely involved the part of his instruction that wasn’t in the textbook.

I had a hard time concentrating on the lecture that day. I should be concentrating harder with the kind of grade I got on that test, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the fact that I had failed a test. I had never failed a test before. School was the one thing I was good at, especially classes like physics.

At dinner that night, I looked around the dining hall for a place to sit. I saw Skeeter and Bok and a girl from another building whom I knew to be Bok’s friend from high school. I saw Megan with some girls I didn’t know, probably from her building. I saw Mike and Ian and Gina from the third floor of my building. I decided to ignore all of them and sit by myself. Why bother sitting with friends when I would probably fail out of UJ at the end of the year and never see these people again? I was an Interdisciplinary Honors Program student. I wasn’t supposed to fail a test.

My plan to sit alone didn’t work, though. Taylor and Pete and Charlie saw me sitting alone about five minutes later and approached me with their trays of food.

“Can we sit here?” Taylor asked.

“Sure,” I muttered. I thought about telling them I wanted to be alone, but that didn’t seem right.

“How’s it goin’?”

“Not well.”

“What’s wrong, man?”

“I bombed a physics midterm.”

“Is that all?” Taylor said, almost laughing. “I’ve bombed a few tests this year, and I’m still doing fine.”

“It’s not funny,” I said, a little louder this time, looking down at the table and not making eye contact. “I thought I knew all of this.”

“Sorry. I know it’s tough. But try not to let it get you down.”

“I’m trying. I can’t help it. It’s all I can think about.”

“This really isn’t the end of the world,” Pete said. “Which physics? 9A?”

“Yes.”

“My class just got the first midterm back. I got a B-minus. I think it was a rude awakening for everyone. How bad was yours?”

“44 out of 120.”

“Yikes.”

I should have taken Pete’s class, I thought. Pete’s instructor probably goes by the book and doesn’t add his own thing. Unfortunately, it was too late to change my schedule for this quarter. I would try signing up for 9B in the fall with a different instructor. Maybe I’d have an easier time with someone other than Dr. Collins… that is, if I get to sign up for classes in the fall at all, and I don’t get kicked out of school for failing first.

“Are you doing anything this weekend?” Taylor asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Maybe that’ll be good. Just rest, and study physics so you’ll do better next time.”

“We’ll see, I guess.”

The others started talking about their plans for the weekend. It was Friday night, so they all had Jeromeville Christian Fellowship later that night. I finished eating as they talked about JCF and the speaker for that night. It sounded like they were going to have a fun night. I didn’t have anything like that to look forward to, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have felt like going anyway.

I spent the rest of Friday night in my room. I wrote emails to the girls I knew from the Internet whom I had been talking to. I checked all the Usenet groups I followed, a few for fans of bands I liked and a few for fans of sports teams I liked. I got on IRC looking for girls to talk to, but no one I knew was on and no one in the chat was talking to me.

I read for a while. I had been reading It by Stephen King. My mom was a big Stephen King fan, and she had read this book when I was a kid, when the book was new, so she had told me a little bit about the book over the years. The book was very long; I had been reading it for over a month, and I still had over a hundred pages to go.

Around ten o’clock, I walked down the hall to use the bathroom, then walked up and down the entire length of the second floor to see if anyone was around. As I turned the corner and got closer to my room, number 221, I saw Liz from room 222 come out of the stairwell and walk toward her room. She heard me walking and turned around. “Hey, Greg,” she said, smiling.

“Hi.”

“What’s up?”

“I bombed a test.”

“Oh no. What class?”

“Physics 9A.”

“I’ve heard that’s hard. I only have to take the 7 series.”

“This never happens. Physics was always easy in high school. What if every test is going to be hard for me from now on? What if I fail and get kicked out of school?”

“You’re not going to fail out,” Liz said reassuringly. “Everyone has a bad day sometimes.”

“I guess. I’ve never done this badly on a test before. I’m scared.”

“I just got back from JCF. The speaker tonight spoke on God’s unconditional love. You know what that means, right?”

“I think it means God loves me no matter what?” I asked hesitantly.

“Yes! Paul wrote that nothing could ever separate us from the love of God. Greg, you are still a beloved child of God even if you bomb a physics test. Even if you fail out of school. You’re not going to, but even that isn’t the end of the world, because God loves you, and he has a plan for you.”

“I guess.”

“No. I know. God brought you here to Jeromeville for a reason, and it wasn’t to get all down on yourself. Can you at least think about that and try to cheer up?”

“I’ll try.”

“It’ll be okay, Greg. It really will. I’ll pray for you.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it. And I’m going to start going to office hours and studying harder.”

“See? You have a plan. That’s good. But don’t ever forget that God’s love for you is not conditional on your grades.”

“I won’t forget.”

The rest of my weekend was fairly uneventful. I had physics problems to work on, and this time I read the book far more carefully as I was working. I would not get caught off guard again by a difficult midterm. I had one more midterm in three weeks, and then the final exam.

The more I thought about what had happened with this physics midterm, the more I realized that the answer to one of the open questions about my life was taking shape. It was time to make a decision. On Tuesday morning, after math class got out, I had a three hour gap until my chemistry lab, so I went to the basement of Marks Hall. A display on the wall had various forms for students; I checked to see if the one I needed was there. It was. REQUEST TO CHANGE MAJOR. I picked it up and filled it out, with “Mathematics” as the requested major. I read through the fine print explaining that some majors were impacted and needed prior approval or other conditions; I was pretty sure Mathematics was not impacted in that way. I submitted the form and left.

My next stop was Dr. Collins’ office hours. His office was in the physics building, next to the chemistry building and Ross Hall and not too far from Marks Hall. Like the chemistry building, the physics building did not have another name. Dr. Collins’ office was on the third floor, and when I got there, a line had already formed out the door. Four students were in front of me waiting to ask questions. I listened and took notes on all the other students’ questions.

“What can I help you with?” Dr. Collins asked when I got to the front of the line.

I showed him my midterm. “You counted the score wrong. Or your TA did. I only got 44, not 54.”

Dr. Collins looked at my midterm and thought for a few seconds. “It was our mistake. Don’t worry about it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“I was confused about this problem.” I got out my textbook and pointed to a problem I hadn’t been able to solve from last night’s homework. I listened as Dr. Collins reminded me how coefficients of friction worked, and how to calculate kinetic energy.

“Thanks,” I said. “I think I get it now.”

“You’re welcome. See you in class tomorrow.”

I had my chemistry lab that afternoon. The laboratory classrooms for general chemistry were in the basement of the chemistry building. The hallways in the basement were dim and a little scary, painted a drab yellow, with lots of pipes and electrical conduits visible on and near the ceiling. The lab rooms themselves looked exactly as one would expect them to look given what the rest of the basement looked like; this was the perfect setting for a laboratory. My lab partner for this quarter was a girl named Marissa. She was a sophomore, a biology major, thin with a somewhat dark complexion and medium brown hair. We met last quarter, when we were also in the same lab section for chemistry, and on the first day of lab of this quarter, neither of us knew anyone else in this lab section, so we decided to be partners.

I arrived about a minute before Marissa did, about five minutes before class actually started. “Hey, Greg!” Marissa said when she got to our table. “How are you?”

“I’m doing okay. I just submitted a change of major form.”

“Changing your major? From math to what?”

“From undeclared to math.”

“Oh! I thought you told me you were a math major. You hadn’t declared it yet?”

“I was thinking about a few different majors. Math, physics, maybe chemistry. All the classes I was good at in high school. I’ve been leaning more toward math. I bombed a physics midterm last week, and that made up my mind for good to do math.”

“Oh no! How bad was it?”

“I failed. The grader counted my score wrong, and with the curve, the incorrect score would be a C-minus. I was honest and told him about the mistake in office hours, and he told me not to worry about it. But still, if I’m doing that poorly on the first physics test I ever take, it’s not going to be my major.”

“I get that. My roommate from last year was an engineer until she bombed her first calculus final. Now she’s an art major.”

“Wow. That’s a big change.”

“Yeah. Do you need chemistry for a math major?”

“No. But you need it for everything else I was considering. I’ll probably finish out the Chem 2 series, I like chemistry, but I won’t be taking any more after that.”

“Yeah. Well, good luck with your new major.”

“Thanks.”

I went to Dr. Collins’ office hours once a week for the rest of the quarter. I reread every chapter of the physics book in the week before the second midterm. I paid more attention in class and did my homework right away so that I would remember what I had learned. I was determined not to fail the next midterm. I had never before studied so hard for a science class.

Three weeks later, as I walked into 66 Ross knowing that I would get the second midterm back, I remembered what Liz had told me after the first midterm. I was still a beloved child of God no matter how I did on this test. I had done so poorly the first time that I felt like I was ready to fail again. I wasn’t going to be shocked at a bad grade, since I had already done poorly in the class so far, but I was at least hoping that I did significantly better. I kept trying to remind myself that God loved me even if I failed physics, but it was hard to wrap my head around that. This was the first time anyone had ever told me that God still loved me even if I failed a class, and while it sounded right in my heart and in my mind, I still could not really wrap my head around that concept.

I pulled my midterm paper out of the letter D section of the rack of returned papers, and I nervously looked at the top of the paper. I gasped and almost dropped the paper when I saw that I got a perfect score. A perfect score, after having failed the last test. I had the highest grade (well, at least tied with everyone else who got a perfect score) in a class of 200 students. I smiled wide as I walked to my seat. My hard work had paid off.

At the end of the quarter, I somehow still ended up getting an A in the class. I don’t know exactly how the professor calculated the grade, and I felt like I didn’t deserve the A after doing so poorly on the first midterm. But I wouldn’t complain. After that first midterm, I knew that I needed to change what I had been doing. Life gets me down sometimes, and the best I can ever do is get back up and try again and see what I am actually capable of. The hard work in physics continued to pay off as I continued to get As in all three quarters of physics, and I never failed a test again for the rest of my life.

However, this experience also taught me that physics was not my strong point. I did not enjoy the level of work I had to put in to get good grades in physics. Mathematics was more enjoyable and came more naturally to me. I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with a math degree, but I was definitely making progress now that I had a goal for the rest of my time at UJ.