“I mean, I just don’t know what happened, you know?” begins Christiana Grooms, a junior studying at Virginia Tech. As we sit together on the steps of Burress Hall, Christiana buries her face into her palms and begins to shake back and forth uncontrollably. She then lifts her head, throws her hands straight in the air and looks to the sky as if about to preach Bible verses to anyone within a 100 foot radius.
“WHY ME?” Christiana screeches like a banshee. A bystander waiting for Blacksburg Transit by the name of Kyle Jones, a senior studying computer science who had just been dumped by his girlfriend for a frat guy who probably uses “Do you even lift bro?” as a comeback, takes out his headphones and stops listening to Drake’s “Take Care” album to see what the fuss was about.
“I just don’t get it. I was doing fine the first few weeks!” Christiana exclaims. She looks toward me, her eyes were more bloodshot than a freshman who had just discovered hash for the first time. “We were assigned homework from the textbook every week, so I did the responsible thing and bought a Chegg subscription. I learned how to solve the problems by copying the work online from that site; it helped me visualize everything. I didn’t have to waste my time going to office hours because LeagueKing69 would answer all of my questions for me! The Professor didn’t even CARE when I told her I paid $14.99 a MONTH for access to Chegg.”
I turned away and started into the distance, blankly, as if on an episode of "The Office."
“There was honestly no point of even going to class, so I didn’t even bother,” she continued. Christiana wiped her tears on her jacket sleeve, which was ineffective because her jacket was waterproof. “It would take the professor 45 minutes at the start of every class to just figure out how to get her laptop connected to the projector. It would only work after this one kid who claimed he ‘knew Python’ turned the projector off and on again. And like, we all know pythons are deadly Amazonian creatures, so I really don’t understand what that had to do with computers.”
The sun was starting to fall lower into the sky, and Uber drivers were making their way to meet freshmen in the student parking lot, ready to take them to make decisions they would probably regret. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could sit and tune in to Christiana groan ceaselessly about her dilemma. D2 was my choice of dinner for that night, and after my stomach churned for what seemed to be the 50th time, the dining hall was proving to live up to the phrase “D2 Dash.”
“We weren’t even allowed to use calculators on our exams, which was dumb because when are calculators ever going to go extinct?” Christiana says as she stands up indicating her departure. I ignore her ignorant comment as this notion filled me with glee. I immediately began thinking about the 500 yard sprint I was about to make to the nearest commode. “Whatever, I was worried about not getting an internship for next summer because a lot of employers wanted to see this class on my transcript, but I’ll just have my dad get me a position at his office. Nepotism is key.”
She waves goodbye and leaves, and I am left with fewer brain cells than I would have been after watching an episode of "Keeping Up With The Kardashians."
