Chapter 24

There was almost no traffic as I drove home. It was almost three, I realized. My parents were probably already home. I wondered if my mother would stay up to grill me, as she had in high school.

The house was dark when I pulled in the driveway, and she was nowhere to be seen. Either she had had too much to drink and gone to bed to sleep it off, or she had determined that I was old enough to decide when to come home. I guess I’d find out tomorrow.

I don’t recall getting to my room or getting undressed, as my mind was replaying the evening and I was attempting to catalog some of the highlights with as much detail as I could remember. I fell asleep in the middle of the reruns.

It was late, no surprise, when I awoke, and I showered and found clean clothes. My mother was sitting at the kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee, about to reprimand me, I suspected, for breathing too loudly.

I poured coffee and decided it would be better to let her initiate conversation. Or not initiate it.

Over a bowl of cereal, she finally said, “Have a nice time?” She didn’t look like she meant it, but it was the polite thing to say. I told her a little about Carlie’s party. She looked a bit green when I told her what had been on offer for food.

“Listen,” she said, “I think everyone’s going to be on their own for food today. I don’t think I’m up to it. I’m going to go lie down and rethink my relationship with alcohol.”

I suppressed a smile as she stumbled upstairs. I had another few weeks before I had to head back to school, and nothing on my agenda. I read a little of the book Karen had given me, which made me think about footwork and center of gravity, and I was a little surprised to realize how much all the martial arts had in common in this respect.

I’ll skip some time here, as it doesn’t advance the story. Karen called me just before she left for the airport, just to say a quick goodbye, then flew back to the west coast. I spent a couple of mindless weeks at home. This is hard to believe, but our home PC had no modem, so I couldn’t send or receive emails. My parents were a little behind the times. Just having a PC in the house made them appear more modern, but the truth is they didn’t know how to use one. We just had it for writing school papers.

My friends, of course, had already headed back to their schools where their own exams were looming, so I had no one to pal around with. I went to a lot of movies, mostly forgettable, and spent some time in the main branch of our local library seeing what was available on psi research.

My mother started to fall back into her friendly inquisition mode, trying to find out what I was thinking about my future, about Karen, and so on. I had thought that having Mindy around would satisfy her need to relive her life vicariously, but apparently not. So in order to avoid it I made plans to head back to school a little early, before classes started.

A few days later my father drove me to the train and I headed back to --------- for the second semester. The trip was uneventful, and the dorm was still half empty when I got in. Even Larry wasn’t there yet.

Classes didn’t start for another few days, but I thought I might need a head start on my coursework. We’d already been given reading lists. After putting my things away, I opened one of the books and started browsing. The room was a bit stuffy, so I left the door partially open to get some air exchange moving.

I still didn’t know how I’d done in my exams; tests weren’t really my strong point. Who knows, there might be a letter my my campus mailbox suggesting that, given my exam results, I take a year off to rethink my career aspirations.

Oops, there’s my self-flagellation making its appearance. I was pretty sure I’d passed everything, but the old-fashioned idea of the ‘gentleman’s C’ was long out of date.

The cafeteria was still closed, so food for the next couple of days would require a little more foresight and planning. I was starting to get a little hungry, and dreading getting bundled up to go in search of a sandwich.

“Yo, Carter, you’re back early.”

I looked up, and Con Doherty had his head poking through the open door. He’d been in a couple of my classes. Not buddies, but we’re friendly since he was in the same dorm.

“Yeah, I thought I might get a head start on the reading for this term.”

“You are such a tool, Carter. Go with the flow.”

“Yeah, that might work for you smart people, but some of us have to work at it. So why are you back, then?”

“Coach called for some extra practices, ‘cause we sucked so bad in the last game before break. First one’s tomorrow.” Doherty played basketball.

“Hah, your sins come back to haunt you.”

“Whatever. Is the mess hall open, you know?”

“No, not till Monday, I think. I was just considering going out to find something to eat nearby.”

“It’s snowing out, are you nuts?”

“It’s either go out or survive on potato chips from the vending machine.”

“You know there are places that deliver food, right? Pizza, Chinese.”

“Yeah, but they’re usually too much for one person.”

“How ‘bout we split something? It’ll save me from going out, too.”

So we agreed to split a large pizza and got a bottle of soda to go with it. Between the two of us we had enough for the food and a tip. I called the order in.

While we waited, he sat down and we talked about the classes we’d had. He admitted to some nervousness about exam results. His father had gone here, so that legacy, some family money and a real talent for basketball had gotten him an offer. He admitted that his school grades were pretty average.

So maybe there were a few more like me, pretty good students but not geniuses. Perhaps there was hope for me after all.

He looked around the room, comparing it to his own, I think, seeing what interests were reflected in the things that were visible.

“Holy shit, who’s that?”

He was looking at Karen’s picture on the shelf over my desk.

“My girlfriend back home. Actually, she’s in school in California now, so we don’t get to see each other very often. I just said goodbye to her again a couple of weeks ago.”

“She’s freaking gorgeous. You lucky bastard.”

“Damn right I am.”

“If I had a girl who looked like that I’d quit school and follow her wherever she went.”

I was saved from answering by the sound of the wall phone ringing in the hall. I got up to answer it, and the desk in the lobby told me my food had arrived. I took Con’s money and went down to collect the order. This was going to leave me a little short. I’d have to find an ATM and take out some more money tomorrow.

The pizza solved our immediate problem, and between the two of us we finished it off quickly.

“Better,” he said, patting his stomach. “Much better. I’ve got a joint back in my room. You want to partake?”

I told him I wasn’t in the mood, but don’t let me stop him, so he went off to find it. When he came back he was followed by one of his roommates, Jimmy, whose last name I’d forgotten.

The two of them passed it back and forth, the three of us carrying on a rambling conversation mostly fueled by the joint. Someone produced a deck of cards and we started a poker game for points rather than money, since Con and I were pretty much out of cash.

We did that for an hour or so until the two of them crashed and went off to find sleep or another joint, they weren’t quite sure.

I lay back on the bed, my zeal for reading long gone. Maybe I should just go to bed and start fresh tomorrow. I was interrupted by the door banging open and Larry staggering in, laden down by bags and packages.

“I didn’t expect you back so early,” I said. “And where’s Ames? Didn’t he drive you and carry your bags?”

“Normally, he would, but I decided to do it myself, now that I’m mobile.”

I looked up, confused.

“One of my Christmas presents. A car of my own. My parents — mostly my father, I think — decided that now that I’m a college man, I should have my own car.”

“You got a car? For Christmas?”

None of the people I knew in school had ever gotten a present like that, nor had we heard of anyone who had. We had to borrow a car if we wanted to drive somewhere, or save up for our own barely-running used car.

“I know what you’re thinking, Carter. I didn’t really want one. I guess I’d gotten used to having someone drive me everywhere I wanted. I’d asked for one in high school, because girls like you to have your own car, but my folks shot me down. I don’t know why they changed their mind now. Anyway, I have a car.”

I asked about it, and come to find out it wasn’t just your basic transportation vehicle. It was a new, high-end sporty model. I kind of knew what they cost from seeing the ads in the papers, and I just shook my head. This was so far out of my league that I could only marvel at it from afar.

“Well, that’ll come in handy if you ever get a part-time job delivering pizza.”

“Just what I was thinking. I brought some snacks with me. You hungry?”

I admitted that I could probably eat something more, and he produced some wrapped sandwiches — there looked to be at least a half dozen — and I picked one. It turned out to be homemade turkey with lettuce and cranberry sauce. It was one of the best sandwiches I’d ever eaten.

We talked for awhile, then I decided to get some sleep while Larry headed off to see if there were a party. I had to admire his dedication.

And so the next few days passed. I read a lot, till I felt fairly up to date with the assigned reading. I spent some time in the library with my personal research into psi, mostly trying to separate the sensationalist drivel from the serious studies.

Come Monday, classes resumed with my schedule the same as the previous semester with the exception of my English Lit class, which was now Wednesday and Friday mornings. So much for vacation Fridays. Easy come, easy go.

The big surprise was that grades finally showed up in my campus mailbox. I’d thought it would take a little longer for them to get around to it, but they were prompt. And, amazingly, I did better than I expected. I got A’s in everything except Real Analysis, where I received a B+. I got an A- in Chemistry which disappointed me a bit because I thought I’d done better than that.

That made me review my expectations for my ability to step into a teacher’s mind and absorb selected fragments of their knowledge. I’d latched on to the Chem TA’s knowledge of the subject, which was considerable. But he wasn’t preparing the lectures or setting the exam questions. That was the purview of the professor teaching the course, and her mind was harder to reach because it was a large class and I needed her focus on me in order to establish a link. I would need to rethink how to do this.

I was a little puzzled by the grade in Real Analysis. In that case I had made a connection with the instructor — it was a smaller class, only about twenty of us — and thought I had gotten a sense of the subject and its framework. I felt like I had understood the material. Still, I wasn’t terribly worried. The B+ was quite a respectable grade, and I’d pretty much decided that I wasn’t going to be a math major. But I might minor in it, and it would be important to understand the subject, which I assumed would be reflected in the grade.

The instructor said he’d return the exams at the next class so we could see what we’d missed. Then I’d find out how I messed up.

Well, for the moment I’ll consider this memory eavesdropping a work in progress. I’ll need to figure out more about how memory is organized and how to find the knowledge I need more efficiently.

Later, I sat down and wrote a brief email to Karen, wondering how her exams had gone and telling her how I’d done. I didn’t make it a long message, as she’d be involved with studying. But I did mention Larry’s Christmas present because I knew it would amuse her to see how the other half lives. I also called home and gave them the grades news, which pleased my mother no end.

Tuesday morning my first class was European History II, same professor, Professor D I called him, the superannuated one who looked like he was at death’s door, but whose brain was still razor sharp. I’d disliked history in high school, because it was presented as an array of names, places, events and dates to be memorized, almost without context. We got none of the sense of interacting people and events, very different from what we learned here. I was developing an appreciation for understanding history because the guy made it interesting.

Every so often, perhaps once a lecture when I’d momentarily gotten his focus, I’d step into his epicenter and rummage through his knowledge in an attempt to understand the facts he was presenting. I was making a concerted effort to find the right-sized “chunks” of knowledge to take from him. My first attempts left me overwhelmed and a little dizzy, because it was physically difficult to assimilate and store too much new information. I had felt faint. I was trying to find a balance.

I thought I had gotten a handle on it toward the end of the last semester, but I think the right size differed depending on the subject I was trying to learn. Lots of separate data elements, as in history and English, seemed to be harder to store and recall. Learning algorithms, processes and techniques, such as in math and chemistry, were a bit easier. I’d figure it out eventually.

I stopped by the campus post office before lunch to check my mailbox. I got my first credit card offer in the mail, a rite of passage. Then I looked at the interest rates they charged and decided to pass. But there was also a letter from Karen, which was a surprise now that we had email. It turned out to be a brief note saying she was in the middle of exams, but she wanted to send me my copy of the photo that Carlie had taken of us at the New Year’s party.

I stared at the picture and felt my heart pounding. The photo captured just how beautiful she had looked, but the thing that grabbed my heart was the look on her face as she looked up at me. There was no doubt at all in my mind, she loved me. I put the photo away carefully and would find a place for it on my desk where I could see it all the time.

After lunch, I headed off to the first Chem class of the second semester. I thought I had had a good grasp of the topics we’d covered in the fall and had been a tiny bit disappointed at getting an A- in the class. Yeah, I know, I should be happy, but I thought I’d done better in the final. We’ll get the exams back in the recitation tomorrow and I could see where I’d messed up.

I’d kind of liked Chemistry better than I thought I would. I liked the idea of trying to understand what would happen if you mixed certain chemicals together and how to predict what would happen. It was a little like a detective story, trying to figure out who dunnit from the clues you found. Anyway, I was looking forward to this semester.

After class there was, as usual, the chem lab, where the graduate assistants tried to keep us all from killing or maiming ourselves or each other, while trying to teach us something useful. They seemed to be batting around .500. People weren’t always careful.

And that was my Tuesday. They were all going to be pretty much like that. After dinner at the chuck wagon, I went off to Math Club, where someone from the math department talked about group theory and its applications. They didn’t spend much time on the applications because they were enamored by the beauty of the symmetry in group theory. He left a lot of us in his wake.

Afterwards, I settled down on my bed to catch up on my reading until my computer dinged to signal an incoming email. No one sent me email except Karen, so I bounced off the bed. She said ... well, I’ll just let her tell it.

Hi. I finally feel like I can breathe again. From the time I got back on campus I felt like I was underwater and didn’t have enough air to last. I never felt like this last year, I always felt like I knew the answer to anything they could throw at me on a test. This year, I don’t know, it was like I wasn’t sure that I understood everything they’d talked about .

I’m not alone. Except for a few people who seem to have no doubts about anything they had learned, we all felt like there were parts of each class they we weren’t quite sure of. And we’re smart people — you and I talked about that over Christmas — but this is like a whole different level of learning.

Anyway, when I’d finished my last exam I felt something like, maybe despair, like I had no idea how I’d done and whether it would be good enough. I wanted to throw in the towel and just go home. The only thing that kept me here is seeing so many folks whose minds I respect in much the same state.

So we did what all college students do in that situation. We got drunk. I told you what happened the last time I did that, but this time we were all feeling too sorry for ourselves. A bunch of us went to the local diner and got comfort food hoping it would make us feel better. I had cake and pie. There, I said it and I’m not ashamed.

It was a pretty depressing few days, there was a lot of crying all through the dorms, then classes started up again in earnest and we didn’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves.

So today, finally, grades were posted. Well, mailed, actually. And I did ... okay. Apparently I hadn’t made as many mistakes on the exams as I thought I had. I won’t detail everything, but I got A’s and a couple of B’s. That conversation we had came back to me when I started panicking about my poor showing. I hate that I got B’s, but I’ll try to figure out what I can do to improve there.

Carter, your voice keeps lurking in my head, telling me about passports to grad school and jobs and the specific grades don’t matter as much. It’s a little creepy, you in my head, but nice to hear a friendly voice. (!)

Did you get Carlie’s picture? I mailed it to you. I really like it. I’ve got it here in front of me.

What did you do to amuse yourself before you had to head back to school, while I was sweating exams and you were lazing on the couch eating bon-bons?

I asked around after exams when I was feeling a little better about myself, looking into what research opportunities might be available for undergrads. I don’t have much definitive information yet, but there are some things there. That could be fun.

I’m rambling a bit now, but I wanted to let you know how I’d done. I’m happy to hear about your exams. You seem to get less stressed about them, if I’m reading between the lines correctly. Is that true? Why don’t you worry over them? Even in high school, when I was pretty sure I’d done well, I still worried about the things that could have happened. Maybe I’m just nuts. Come visit me in the sanitarium.

-- K

I had to smile. Partly because she was making an effort to be lighthearted about her obsession with perfection, and partly because I thought it would be good for her to have to face that.

I clicked ‘Reply To Sender’ and wrote a quick answer to her email. Yes, I’d gotten the picture, and thanks. I think it’s the best picture I’ve ever seen of you, you looked stunning. It’s here above my desk and every time I look at it I smile and say to myself, ‘You lucky bastard!’

I did almost nothing after you left, I said, some reading and a few forgettable movies. My mother started prying since I was around, like the old days, and it started to get on my nerves, so I left for school a few days early.

I told her that I did worry about exams, but some part of me gets more out of the process of learning so I don’t obsess so much about the tests of what I’d learned. I’d been doing some reading, I said, and I thought I was something like the psychologist Abraham Maslow’s idea of the self-actualizing individual, focused on the skills that expand your ability to fulfill your innate aptitudes and desires, and less on other’s judgment about how well you have learned them.

If you have time, I mentioned, ask Carlie if she could print a wallet-size copy of the picture you sent, so I can carry it with me. I’ll pay her whatever it costs to do that. I’ll leave you alone now with your pie and cake.

I sent the email, and sat back in the chair, thinking about her. I thought there were two extremes for students heading off to college, one the students looking for a four-year party, with a few classes mixed in, and the other the grade-obsessed over-achievers like Karen who are suddenly faced with a reality they’d never had to face before.

In both cases, if they didn’t change their attitude it would not end well. I thought Karen had enough self-awareness to realize that she’d have to change, to adjust to her new reality.

I lay back on the bed and did some more reading, then went to sleep.

Wednesday was a busy day, with English Lit in the morning, followed by the Chem II recitation section. When I looked at the final exam that he passed back, I mentally slapped myself. Several times. I had made multiple foolish arithmetical errors, which made a few of my answers wrong even thought the steps to derive them were correct.

Geez, I hadn’t done that since early in high school. I hadn’t been paying attention to the details, and as a result I screwed up. If I hadn’t done that, I would have gotten an A in the course. That was a hard lesson.

In the Real Analysis class, the comments on several of the problems informed me that I hadn’t understood the concepts as well as I’d thought. O-kayyyy, I’ll buy that. Maybe I’ll have to spend a little more time on this, and maybe I’ll have to mine a bit more knowledge from the prof’s mind. The problem with that is that I didn’t know what I didn’t know, so I’d have trouble finding what it was I’d have to learn.

Then I mentally shook my head and said, hold on, why are you doing this the hard way? Why not just ask him? He had office hours, take advantage of them. Let him point me in the right direction. I resolved to do that.

I just had enough time after class to get back to the dorm and grab my workout bag. The Martial Arts club had its first meeting for this semester and I felt like I could stand to work off some stress.

It was more sparsely attended today, for whatever reason, but we were given sparring partners and told to go easy on one another. I got the guy who did Brazilian jiu-jitsu, who was much better at grappling than I was. He made sure the floor was clean by using my uniform to polish it. But I did get in one good throw and pinned him well enough that he had to tap out to get free. Still, I think we both picked up some new things.

I was pretty well wiped by the time I got back and took a shower. I would have some muscle soreness in the morning. I had dinner with Larry, who said he had resolved to spend more time studying after looking at his first semester grades. He passed, mostly.

On Thursday, I had history class again. I had to give the guy credit, he made the subject interesting and his enthusiasm was catching. It may have been my imagination, but he seemed to be looking in my direction more often. I thought he was looking at me, but maybe he was checking out the girl behind me.

After class I took a detour and met with the instructor for Real Analysis, who had office hours till noon. I had to wait a few minutes till he finished with someone else, but I sat down and asked him straight out to help me understand the concepts I’d messed up on in the final. I brought the corrected exam for him to look at.

A lot of teachers I think really wouldn’t be bothered, thinking that if you can’t understand it from the lectures and from reading, then there was probably no hope for you. To his credit he seemed pleased that I was trying to understand what I had missed, and spent some time explaining the concepts and asking me questions to make sure I’d gotten it.

I began to see how I had misinterpreted what I had learned, which had led to my mistakes on the final. And talking it through, to make sure I had grasped it, I worked through the exam problems again, out loud. “That’s it,” he told me, “you’ve got it.”

Just so we’re clear here, it wasn’t simply my innate intelligence that helped me work through it properly, I looked into his epicenter to watch how it was done. I wasn’t proud, anything that’ll help me master these ideas is fair game, so I “borrowed” some of his knowledge until I felt confident with the concepts.

As I wandered off to the mess hall to get some lunch before my next class, I ruminated about how the world might change, just from an education standpoint, if everyone had the ability to link into another’s mind and absorb knowledge. Everyone would, for example, be able to do calculus, or have a solid grasp of American and European history, just by piggybacking on the knowledge of an expert.

Some of those people would become fascinated by those ideas and perhaps find new insights into a topic that had never occurred to anyone before. And some would, I suppose, now be saddled with knowledge that they would never use in their daily tasks. There was something to be said for having an educated and thoughtful electorate, able to draw parallels with other times and other places.

I then wondered if there was something in people’s brains that would prevent them from assimilating that knowledge. There are certainly people who are forgetful, unable to recall even simple things like their home phone number. What would happen if they had the ability to borrow this information but could not store it or retrieve it? What would be the psychological ramifications? I suppose it could lead to some kind of mental trauma, a new kind of psychosis.

Nothing’s ever easy, is it? I was having enough trouble learning to deal with this myself. I thought the downsides to making it generally available, if that were possible, outweighed whatever positive effects it might bring to a society.

I got a sandwich and some soup — it was cold out — and found a table. I ate the soup and felt a little better, then started on the sandwich.

“Carter, my man, can I share your table? It’s crowded.”

Con Doherty was already sitting down, so apparently it was a rhetorical question. He had a burger and a plate of fries, plus a large soda. Well, not my job to offer nutritional counseling to the basketball team.

“What are you off to next?” he asked, and I told him that Chemistry was up next, then a lab.

“Better you than me. Science intimidates me. Especially if there’s math involved.”

I asked, and found out he was a Business major, which is kind of like saying you’re a liberal arts major, you study a little of this, a little of that, until you’ve dabbled in enough things to call yourself educated. There doesn’t seem to be much purpose to it other than to provide you with a general background of large ideas.

“You do okay on finals?” he asked me.

“Yeah, mostly, I screwed up a few things I shouldn’t have and that got me dinged, grade-wise, but I did okay. You?”

“I passed. But I think it might be partly due to my being in the basketball varsity. Nobody will say anything definite, but there are always a few winks going on between the coaches and some of the professors so we have our suspicions. You got plans for the weekend?”

“Not this weekend, no. I’ll probably try to catch up on my reading.”

“Carter, you need to learn when it’s time to relax. It helps keep you fresh. You know, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a real tool.’ Is that how it goes?”

“More or less. I have nothing against fun, Con, I like it. But too much of the fun around here involves getting yourself so wasted you can’t remember what you did to have fun. Not my idea of fun. But that’s just me. You gotta choose your own fun.”

“Yeah, I hear ya. I’ve done a couple of those where I woke up and didn’t know where I was or how I got there. I try not to do that too much anymore. Anyway, there’s a party tomorrow at the Kappa house that promises to be fun, good band, lots of women, and not just from here, either. It’s open by invitation from one of the regulars. I’m a regular. Why don’t you come? It’ll loosen you right up.”

“Those frat parties don’t do much for me. It’s like a contest to see who can get the most drunk soonest. As attractive as that sounds, it doesn’t really ring my chimes.”

“Well, you’re the one who decides how drunk you get. Nobody’s forcing you.”

He had a point. It might beat sitting around the dorm staring at the walls. I told him I’d think about it and maybe check in with him tomorrow. I glanced at my watch and saw that class was looming, so I took my leave.

I did Chem class and then hustled off to my lab section. Not much to report. I wrote up my experiment results and handed it in, then paused as I started off to Psych Club. I thought, maybe not today, I’m tired. So instead I went back to the dorm and took a nap. I felt better when I woke up, and Larry and I went and had dinner. I read till bedtime.

Friday, which used to be my ‘vacation’ day, now had my English Lit class scheduled for 9 a.m. I’d done the assigned reading and then some, so I had a leg up and was able to ask some intelligent questions. At least I thought they were intelligent.