Serious Business

Sarah scared me halfway out of my wits when I came out of Professor Whelk's office.

"Hey Brian, What did he say?"

"He told me it was a pleasure to have another participant in the discussion, but I'll have to 'keep it a little more didactic' in the future. Gave me a bunch of junk about keeping discussions on the pleasant side."

"Not bad, then, right? He could probably have tried to kick you out of the class."

"I wish he had."

"No! Look, I convinced my roommate to sketch a poster; we should have copies by tomorrow night. Would you help me put them up? Nobody else wants to."

"Poster for what?" Somewhere in the back of my mind a little voice said "Bad idea. Should have just said no."

"To protest classroom bias, what else? Promote questioning of the accepted norms in teaching liberal arts! Do you have some free time today? I wanted to talk to the newspaper staff, but I'm totally booked for the afternoon. French, Physics, and Greek Theology. The chief editor agreed to have someone interview me, but if it isn't done in the next two hours they have to put in a filler and send it off to the printer. Could you talk to them in my place? I really wanted to get it in this week's issue..."

An hour and a half before Physics. I had the time, but interviews have never been on my list of favorite afternoon activities. The little voice told me I needed to stop by and see if the campus store had any cheap laptops. My old Pentium II box wasn't getting any faster, after all. "Sure. How long will it take?"

"Oh, it shouldn't be more than thirty minutes or so. You know where the office is? In the student union. Their door is pretty well marked." She glanced at her watch. "I'll see you later. Find me at lunch tomorrow and we'll talk about the posters. Thanks so much for doing this for me!" Sarah gave me a hug before she ran down the hall. I smirked at the little voice in the back of my head, and started steeling myself for the interview. Unpleasant, but worth it.

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Yipes. Short post. I've spent this week alternately cramming to finish summer homework and wasting my time on webcomics. Not that it's the worst thing I could be doing, but it isn't the best either. For goodness sakes, if I condemn them I'll be a bit of a hypocrite, no? So this isn't all that I had planned. And further bad news for my hypothetical audience: I'll be at band camp for the next week. So the next installment will be a day late. Hopefully I'll have time to make it a long one, though. Have a nice week, hypothetical audience!