How to Kill What Can't Grow - CH2

C H 2 - Our First Class Together

We left the room together.

Nothing special. Our next class is the only one that we share together. And the project topics--that we had just organized into a listing of our preferences and that we had met solely to complete--was for said class. So, it would be weird if we arrived in our next class at separate times.

You were walking on my left. This meant that when we descended the three flights of stairs together, you hugged the interior railing while I was forced to work double-time to catch back up to you. I think you might’ve slowed your pace to accommodate this. If so, thank you. That was kind of you. Or maybe I’m giving you too much credit and I really did manage to keep up with your pace all on my own.

I don’t remember who initiated the convention of talking to each other. I guess we can just start at the part that I remember as being as close to the beginning of this conversation as possible. That would mean you started it.

You began listing off people in your club and asking if I knew any of them. I’m pretty confident you were the one who brought up the topic of your club again. But I could be wrong.

Some of them, I stated, that I think I might know. Most of them I did not.

You mentioned the member count was approximately at a count of a dozen, with you included, but most of them were student staff-members for maintaining the club. But most of them were graduating next semester, so you had no idea what was going to happen to the club next year. You began listing their duties. You mentioned you were elected as president of your club.

“For some reason,” You added with a grin in your speech, “They chose me.”

I hide a genuine smile at your immature attempts at humble bragging. I’m guilty of this myself, so I half-heartedly congratulate you.

I think we talked a little more about your club. I think I might have mentioned never hearing about it before and you mentioning that being a problem in terms of outreaching to other students and potential members. We were on the first floor and proceeding through the doors to the outside world at this point.

From here we had to walk along a pathway, large enough to fit a compact car, that stretched the length of a major city street. This would eventually lead us to a crosswalk to pass over said street and lead us to the building containing our class. I can’t remember if we had any more of a conversation or if we just walked in silence. I do remember that, at one point, your shoe laces untied. I offered for us to stop if you wanted an opportunity to tie them. You declined and we continued without faltering our pace.

A group of two people walked past us. You moved your walking position closer to me. I’m assuming to let them through. Regardless of the reasoning, I moved to the right because I was raised with this thing called manners and wanted to make certain you had your personal space. Despite you clearly invading mine. But, again. You probably just did this to give the other people room to comfortably continue along the pathway without bumping into you. It’s chill.

However, as I move further away, you move closer to me because of the amount of people walking by. I guess? I lost track of your side of things at this point because I was now stuck walking on the mulch of the decorative trees along the pathway. I get a bit self-conscious about stuff like this because I spent my entire childhood getting yelled at for things I was terrible at predicting and one of those things included walking on the lawn of someone else’s property. And this mulch is someone else’s property. So, yeah.

Basically, I’m not certain how most people would typically react to this situation, but my guilty conscious was telling me to remedy my walking location so that I wasn’t disrespecting your space or the school’s property.

I’m broken as a humanoid logic-making machine. Whatever.

Anyways, so my priority at this point was to satisfy these two challenges suddenly thrusted upon my quests list. My first attempt was to increase my distance from you to a length where I was also still not walking on the school’s mulch. But now I was walking on a sliver of sidewalk that was inches away from a busy city road to the right of us and had a column of trees segregating us.

Even you acknowledged how weird this was by turning your head to glance at me.

Alright, so clearly that won’t work.

My second attempt was to reclaim my position by your side as soon as there was a clearing of sidewalk. Which worked, except there was another tree-plot filled with mulch up ahead. And, you didn’t seem to feel inclined to move more to your left. And, although my memory isn’t the greatest, I’m quite certain there was nobody walking past us anymore and you could’ve definitely moved back over again. And I probably should’ve asked you to. But, instead, I encumbered myself with just settling with walking on the mulch because I pay the school a fortune in tuition and they can use that to pay for new mulch and what they don’t know won’t hurt me.

Anyways, after that awkward fiasco, I think we might’ve talked a bit. But I honestly don’t remember what about. I just know we didn’t mention anything about that awkward mess (thank goodness). Eventually, we made it to the classroom. Even though we started walking to class fifteen minutes before class was scheduled for, I don’t recall there being a lot of people in the room at this point. Initially, I go to sit relatively in one of the front rows on the right side of the classroom where I vaguely remember seeing you sit at. Meanwhile, I turn around to see that you seem to be walking in a different direction.

“You normally sit back here, right?” You inquire with your hand pointed toward the back seats.

I was impressed you noticed. But, then again, you were the one who came up to me and asked me to be your partner. And it’s a little difficult to do that if you didn’t know where I sat. Plus, I’m a creature of habit, so it’s not hard to predict my movements. Additionally, I managed to figure out the general area where you sat as well. And I tend to people-watch from the back corner of classrooms, so this is no big deal for me either.

“Yes, but don’t you sit up here?” I counter.

Some dialogue was exchanged where it’s clear we were willing to sit next to each other, but where we’d sit was up in the air.

“Well, it’s up to you,” I think I said something to that effect.

Whatever it was, you threw it right back at me.

In the end, we made a compromise: we’d sit in my backrow and on your right side of the room.

After this exchange, we took our new seats against the backwall. You sat closer to the entrance door to the classroom with a seat to the right of you for your backpack. I sat to the left of you and tucked my backpack under my chair. I can’t remember what you did after that. I, on the other hand, was on my iPod checking my emails.

Mainly, I was checking responses to a group email I sent to all my classmates in another class that I had with the same professor of the class we shared. This professor made both of his classes project-heavy and required us to obtain partners for a presentation to be given at the end of the semester. My initial plan was to obtain a partner that also shared both classes with me so that we could coordinate our schedules more easily. But, you sort of put a ratchet in that plan. And no one else in the other class had your gusto.

I had already accepted to be partners with the first person who responded to me. I took that as a sign of their punctual work ethic which would be ideal to see transferred to the project that we would eventually have to work on together. However, I had continued to receive several offers afterward. And could only have one partner per class.

One of those offers was from a class member who was also in both classes. He was sitting one column to the left of me and several rows ahead. I had a class with this individual last semester, and he was an extremely smart individual. Which would’ve made him a high partner-candidate in terms of grades. However, he had a knack for hijacking other people’s questions and making it sound like the answer was so obvious. Which discouraged me from asking a lot of questions in the class that we shared last semester.

So, I had no qualms with this avenue failing.

“Hey, (Question-Hijacker),” I called out.

Question-Hijacker turns in his seat to address me.

“I just received your email,” I declare while displaying my device. “Unfortunately, I already accepted someone else’s offer. But, if I receive any more emails, I can send them your way.”

“Okay,” He says solemnly. And returns to whatever he was doing.

With that settled, I return my iPod to my backpack and trade it for my class folder so that I can begin to glance over my notes. There were take-home exercises assigned for that day, so I was probably going over those. I don’t remember how far I had gotten before another student arrived to class and stood before my seat. He greats me and asks me to verify my identity in terms of the class email I sent.

I look up from my seat and comply.

My hand is suddenly captured by his and, apparently, we’re hand shaking now. He introduces himself to me. It appears he’s another classmate that shared both classes with me. He inquires whether I’d received his email reply.

Since I was occupied with homework, and then called away by you to pick topics for our project, I had to neglect replying to some of the replies. However, I had assumed most of them I wouldn’t see again until Wednesday when we’d have our next class. Thus, I had intended to reply to all of them that night when I had gotten home.

I inform him that I already have a partner.

“I was just hoping to find a partner that speaks English,” He says, referencing the large number of foreign students in the Graduate-level course.

I laugh awkwardly because I’m not certain if that’s racist or not and I don’t want to put him on the spot so I’ll just be awkward for the both of us.

He takes a seat.

Another student offers to be his partner in my stead.

I return to my notes.

“Apparently you’re very popular,” I hear you declare from my side.

“No no no no no,” I began to reassure you otherwise. In hindsight, I still can’t remember why. I had no connection to you that would require me to make such an effort. Was this the beginning of it all? I didn’t think so at the time. “I sent out a group email earlier requesting a partner for my other class and I must have started the dialogue.”

That’s the last of what I remember of that exchange.

The professor arrives to class ten-or-so minutes late. As promised, he wants to start the class by having us list our preferred project topics. He has a print-out sheet with all the topics listed where we can write the number order for our respective group column. For some reason, he gives us a time frame of a minute to write them down. I guess to speed through the process? Or for his own amusement, I dunno. Teaching sounds like a boring-enough profession for them to make-up eccentric rules.

He starts by passing the paper to the closest group to the podium that he’s standing behind. As the paper slowly makes its way to the back of the room that you and I are located, we begin speculating if anyone might take any of our preferred topics. I’m especially curious to see if anyone has taken the OLEDs: a topic I wanted as my first, but we changed to our fourth after you said you weren’t familiar with the subject matter.

We finally get our hands on the paper.

We’re one of the first groups, so we can’t see the majority of what topics the class are gunning for, but there’s a sufficient amount to catch our nosey interests. It turns out everyone was fighting for the OLEDs, but no one wanted our agreed-to first preference: The Intel Core i9. I think you took responsibility for writing our list of preferred project topics. Then we passed along the paper to the next group.

After every group filled the paper, the professor continued lecturing for the duration of the class period. At the end, we began packing our bags and preparing to leave. You had gathered your belongings before me because I’m a packing sloth. However, you stood and turned to say good-bye to me before leaving.

“Just warning: I’m a bit of a procrastinator,” You confess.

Despite my high ambitions for this semester, this declaration doesn’t concern me. If anything, it earns you bonus points as a respectable project partner. There’s a reason my GPA isn’t glorious. I, myself, have also been struggling to improve my studying habits. So, seeing you take the initiative to make that confession just shows how honest you are. Which is the trait I desire the most out of my project partners because at least, when you say you can or can’t complete something, I can believe you and plan around that.

I reply to your confession that it’s quite alright and I tend to be guilty of this myself.

Then you left before me.

I didn’t mind then.