NaNoWriMo

Meta: I wrote this shortly after midnight on November 1, 2006 - the first day of National Novel Writing Month. If I had more ambition / hadn't been so busy / actually had a plan / *insert favorite excuse here* I might have continued it for the remaining thirty days and produced a full fledged novel. As it is, this is the first and only scene that I produced during NaNoWriMo. I passed my 3.091 exam that morning with a 52.

It was a dark and stormy night… No, really, it was, I swear – I’m not just saying that to make things sound dramatic or anything. The rain was pouring down at a ridiculous velocity, and the wind… well, let’s just say that the MacGregor wind tunnel effect is no joke. I think I need to get my window fixed, it was freezing inside my room that night, but I digress. Let’s see, now where were we? Ah – it was a dark and stormy night…

And I was sitting up in my room working studying for a 3.091 test, all alone at half past one, while the rest of the dorm was probably out in the lounge watching House reruns or punting p-sets , finding some other way not to do whatever it was they were supposed to be doing, or even sleeping (gasp!). I was supposed to be making an aid sheet to bring into the exam in the morning, but then a small dialog box popped up on my laptop:

tcreese: Hey Penny, you still awake?

edwardsp: Unfortunately… you make your aid sheet yet?

tcreese: Nah, still workin’ on it. You wanna come work with me?

Work with him? It was the middle of the night and Taylor lived across campus in Random Hall, which was situated closer to some of the sketchier areas of Cambridge than I wanted to be at this hour. But here at MIT, p-setting together is considered the next best thing to a date, and I won’t deny that I thought Taylor was kind of cute (albeit in a very nerdy way).

edwardsp: Sure Taylor, I’ll be right over. See you in 10 minutes or so, okay?

I hit send before my better judgment had the chance to stop me. What was I thinking, going out in the middle of the night to study for a test that I was already reasonably well prepared for? I was taking the class on pass/no-record, for crying out loud, I wouldn’t even get a grade! Yet something in my subconscious had prompted me to walk across campus at an ungodly hour just to study for a test that didn’t matter to me in the least. Maybe it was hormones, maybe it was fate… or maybe I was just too damn tired to think straight.

I ambled over to my elephant (that’s a closet, for those of you who don’t speak MITese, we call them elephants here) and tried to select an appropriate outfit. This was a challenge – high school had prepared me well compute nasty-looking derivatives and find the direction of magnetic flux, but nobody had ever taught me what to wear when wandering across campus in the middle of the night.