Emma Philbrook: STUDENT LIFE

There are pros and cons to computers. One pro, of course, is that you can work on multiple things at once. One con, however, is that you can work on multiple things at once.

Take this seemingly simple dovetail: Working on signing up for college classes while trying to write a chapter for a “collaborative fiction project.”

I started off by booting up the Internet and attempting to log into my course manager. While that was loading, I typed a few paragraphs, trying to flesh out my character without giving away too much of her backstory. The writing of good fiction is a delicate process; efficiency should be at best a minimal consideration when creating it. But I figured that since my college courses and the story had exactly nothing in common, working on the two at the same time wouldn’t hurt.

Once the course catalog was loaded, I skimmed through the course requirements. Whitman makes this pretty easy for freshmen, since there’s an introductory course that everybody has to take, leaving only three classes to choose for the rest of the semester. I decided that it would be nice to continue learning Spanish and that I should be on the lookout for courses that might be helpful in the legal field. And, of course, I wanted to take a class in creative writing.

There are roughly 10 gazillion classes offered at Whitman, of which five bajillion are available to freshmen, so I thought I’d type a bit more before I narrowed my choices down. I got a couple paragraphs further before deciding that I didn’t really like where the story was going, so I backspaced the whole thing and started over with a new setting. The character I was trying to highlight had a multifaceted personality, quixotic yet jaded, sage yet naïve, the sort of essence that you can’t capture in a scene about a simple foiled bank heist. She needed something classier – but not too classy.

“Classy” reminded me that I still had some registering to do. I skimmed through the courses and found a few that seemed interesting. I jotted them down and tried to see how the times would mesh.

Philosophy 107 conflicted with Spanish 305, and I found myself torn. On one hand, I really wanted to take Spanish. On the other hand, Philosophy 107 was a course about thinking – in particular, how to think on your feet – a skill I knew I’d need if I were to succeed in law.

I gave up on that for a bit and decided I’d start the chapter with a little bit of introspectiveness. The character seated cross-legged in a strip of sunlight from a half-closed window, her ginger hair draped over her shoulders like a sort of cloak, her eyes gently closed, thinking sideways thoughts about life and its meaning as all the while a sword, ancient but still mirror-bright, rests in a half-clenched hand…

Focus, Emma, focus. Registration…

Simple, I thought. Leaving the Philosophy-Spanish issue aside, I did a few clicks of the mouse and brought up the registration portal for Intermediate Creative Fiction, which I just knew I wanted to take, only to find that there were no more seats available in that class.

My memory of the incident is less than clear, but my brother insists that I punched the computer screen and started shrieking, “Closed? How dare you! I am Alicia Neary, wielder of the Vassal Blade, princess consort of Wallachia, defender of humanity! Yield to my entreaties, o lowly professor!”

I now have a designated “writing time” during which the Internet is unplugged.