First day blues
Illustration by Austin Melio.
Dylan Hostetter, Opinions and Humor Editor
First days of school are always daunting. I remember all the way back to my first day of Kindergarten — I was so nervous that I forgot where I was supposed to be and ended up in the teacher’s lounge. I spent my entire first week drinking black coffee and grading random papers with a crayon.
Now that I’m starting my senior year of college, I feel no different, albeit with a little more experience. For instance, I know to drink my coffee decaf now — the caffeine got to be too much for me by the fifth grade.
I should have known things were going to be dicey from the moment I signed up for classes in July and accidentally crashed every computer running Microsoft Windows. Flights were canceled, banks closed and supply chains were crippled, so thankfully it was blamed on some random cybersecurity company and not me just trying to grab the last spot in ENGL 438.
Moving back into my residence hall turned out to be a bit more difficult than I expected. There seems to be some issue with my student I.D. — namely, I lost it. That being the case, they have refused to let me past the front desk, so I have been camping out in the lobby for the past week.
It is not as bad as you would first think, the RAs only run me out of my tent once or twice a day. I watched some tutorials on TikTok, so now I know how to make various soups and stews in the bathroom sink to feed myself.
The only thing that is a little uncomfortable about living in the residence hall’s lobby is the large, daunting cardboard cutout of Rodney the Ram that watches me sleep every night. He looks so stern and muscular, like a horned Henry Cavill.
My first class started at the bright and early hour of 11 a.m. As part of a new resolution to end my senior year of college with visible abs — I’m told they’re already there, just deeply buried — I decided I would start jogging to all of my classes.
First, I had to pick up my books for the semester. When I arrived at the counter at Barnes and Noble, the woman scanned my barcode and disappeared into the sea of textbooks. A few minutes later, she reappeared with a single textbook the size of a small refrigerator — “The Norton Anthology of Literature: 3500 BCE to Present.”
It was the biggest book I had ever seen in my life, and weighed about 80 pounds — it had apparently been banned in Nebraska for crushing some poor elementary school student.
My backpack was too small to fit it in, so I was forced to carry it during my jog to class. The extra weight was so much that by the time I stepped foot in Hibb’s Hall, I blew both of my knees out. I am pretty sure I could literally hear my patellas dissolving — it sounded a little like Pop Rocks.
After classes were over, I was ready for this day to come to an end. I gave up on even carrying the baby elephant-sized textbook and resorted to pushing it gradually down the sidewalk like a less determined Sisyphus.
Suddenly, a large limousine pulled up beside me and out of the back stepped a well-dressed VCU President Michael Rao. From the front seats came two large Sicilian men. The three of them walked over to me and stood directly in my path.
“We see in our records that you have some outstanding balances with us. When were you planning on paying your tuition for this semester?” Rao asked.
I looked up at him nervously and said, “Sir, it’s only the first day of classes. I can scrape the money together soon, I promise.”
The bruisers who stood behind him revealed two lead pipes they were hiding behind their backs. They patted them intimidatingly against their calloused hands. “That’s good to hear, kid,” Rao said. “It would be a shame if Tony and Reno here had to get their hands dirty.”
I would have been a little more nervous if my knees weren’t already practically chewed gum, but the rest of me was still mostly unbruised, so I heeded his warning. The three of them got back in their limousine and sped off down the street.
By the time I got back to my tent, I was almost ready to call it quits. That was until I whipped up a quality bowl of clam chowder — courtesy of the men’s restroom sink — and realized that things might just be alright after all. As I fell asleep that night, the watchful eye of Rodney was oddly comforting. I think he might have even winked at me.
Editor’s Note: The characters and events depicted in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
