Kate Smith, a University of Toronto frosh, was terrified about starting her first year. She had heard all the horror stories: enraged dons throwing students’ furniture out the window in regular searches for alcohol, lab petri dishes being reused as dining hall plates. Most of all, she feared her roommate would be a “shower-phobic, binge-drinking, heavy metal rocker from outside the Space-Time Continuum.” So when Smith opened the door of B3412 to discover a seven-eyed Zyphoid in a Black Sabbath t-shirt reeking of body odour and vodka, she was “disappointed, but not surprised.”
“I spun in circles screaming ‘Why, universe, why’ nine times. I closed my eyes, counted to ten, and hoped I’d wake up from this nightmare. I tried to see beyond the translucent skin, but then I spotted her tiny beating heart and I just couldn’t,” Smith said with a hint of disappointment in her own superficiality.
Pissed at admissions for accepting an extra-terrestrial, Smith contemplated transferring to Trinity College. Upon realizing it is “super cool to say my dorm is near Drake’s old condo,” she decided to stay put. Her subsequent decision to walk outside proved disastrous. All her social anxieties reached a climax upon finding every single student sitting in fully-formed social circles on the quad. She pulled out measuring tools and tested the circumference and radius of each geometrical figure. “They were perfect. Perfect circles,” she reported. She also overheard various plans already being made for a “Squad Thanksgiving at that one rich kid’s lakeside cottage.”
Turning her focus to academics, Smith set off for her first lecture with confidence. To her dismay, every seat in the lecture hall was full except for one in the back obstructed by a pillar, reserved for adult sit-ins trying to rekindle the fire of learning in their bellies. “I figured I’d connect with Professor Woods after class,” Smith reported with stoic acceptance. Sadly, the Professor flatly rejected Smith’s proposal to commence the Teacher-Student Mentorship Of The Century that might serve Smith well when she applied to graduate school.
Disheartened, Smith visited her registrar about switching classes or becoming a part-time student. Their ensuing conversation about POSt requirements and tuition left Smith with a sensation “akin to feeling thin tape being wound tightly around my entire person.” As the advisor concluded a financial analysis comparing part-time versus full-time, Smith realized she had transfigured into a number. At press time, a gleaming metallic number 7,979 hangs in the Cabinet of Newly-Admitted Assets.
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