Know Your Worth

07

One thing that I've come to learn from my weekly essay marathons from economics and business is that there are two types of English: Snotty Essay English and Normal Everyday English.

The former involved me remixing the dictionary to sound like I knew what I was talking about, while the latter was filled with scrambled sentences as result of my fatigue after staring at the computer for far too long.

At Sam's insistence, I attended a free crash course seminar during the evening on polishing essay writing structures. I ended up getting a free migraine instead.

My slogan for getting through the year was, 'A vanilla iced latte a day keeps the exhaustion at bay,'. To be honest, I could replace the word 'exhaustion' with 'depression' or even 'boredom'.

Troy was a lot busier now, really throwing himself into his graphic designing skills after eventually giving up on hockey, so it wasn't as if I could always rely on him to proofread my essays or give me some new ideas on how to make my introductions and conclusions have more flair.

Kayla hung out with other people a lot more frequently, opting to have lunch and gym dates with them. She'd invited me too, but I'd turned them down.

Her invites were just afterthoughts, a way for her to remain polite and inclusive only because of the fact that I was her roommate who would probably be in close proximity with her for the next three years. Best to always remain cordial, she'd probably thought.

I didn't mind, not really. I was too focused on maintaining my grades. I made sure to seek extra help during tutorials from the tutors, and they were nice to have after-hour consultations with me where I could clarify my doubts privately and without the fear of judgement from others.

I'd even signed up for a gym membership and for pilates sessions as well. It did cost an arm and a leg, but it was worth it to gain muscle and a good core strength.

I'm careful to not focus on the losing weight part, because that's not was I was there for. I was there to feel stronger and better about myself.

In any case, it was a good motivator for me to eat a lot cleaner instead my measly diet of cereal, granola bars, the occasional mashed potatoes and the rare chicken tenders.

I'd even joined a extracurricular, the cooking club. Now, don't get me wrong. I didn't discover a sudden love for cooking, nor did I think that I would have a promising future in the kitchen.

I didn't even find the people there particularly interesting or fun. They were nice, but bland, a complete irony because their dishes did turn out to be colourful and flavourful.

The president was this demure girl, Alondra Garcia, who barely talked to anyone. She took care of the administrative matters but always stuck to her little cooking club clique of two friends, clustered at one stove, laughing and talking away.

She rarely ventured from her friends to come talk to us, or ask us about our meals. She'd come over to help if something really was amiss, like the smell of my burnt mushrooms.

I did become a little disillusioned with the cooking club, but I needed a cost-effective way to eat clean, so I couldn't really complain.

Alondra only gave us some recipes to follow, and then we were off on our own, hunting and competing for the best ingredients to make our dishes. If we were lucky, we could choose our recipes.

I pretended that I was a Masterchef contestant most of the time.

I think the biggest reason for my dislike of Alondra stemmed from the first ever meeting with her.

As the late newbie, she basically peer-pressured me into giving an impromptu introduction about myself to the group of forty or so people.

I distinctly remembered the feeling of wanting the tiled floor to swallow me whole, and my gaze were firmly fixed downwards.

They were sympathetic, and tried to laugh it off by saying that there was nothing to be afraid of.

One of the members even said my shyness was 'endearing', and I had no idea what that word meant until I googled it.

She had meant that my shyness was somehow 'cute', and that made me feel worse.

I did seriously contemplate quitting on that same day, but after Kayla and Sam persuaded me to give it another go, I stuck it out and was able to be largely ignored, left to my own devices in the kitchen.

One thing to look forward to was Founder's Day, and that was solely because all lessons would be suspended that day. July 30th was marked on my calendar with a huge star drawn over the number 30.

I learned that Founder's Day not only entailed an actual assembly in the gigantic Parade Square on campus, but a customary ice hockey game between its members, as it has been for the past seventeen years since it's first win in the prestigious hockey championships.

I also learned that our ice hockey players, whom I'd incorrectly called hockey players this entire time, were called the Blackwell Wolverines. It sounded juvenile, but it's huge multimillion dollar backing was nothing short of impressive.

Many ice hockey players from Blackwell did end up playing in NHL, the National Hockey League, which is kind of a big deal, according to Troy.

Still, there was exactly a week left for Founder's Day. It coincidentally fell on a Friday, which earned a whoop of approval from Troy, a squeal from Kayla, a fist punch in the air from Sam and a relieved sigh from me.

The timetable that was sent to us via email was indeed a sight for my sore, bloodshot eyes. It was just an entire day of fun and games, and I could just skip the games and go to sleep.

While the assembly talk about the history of Blackwell required compulsory attendance for freshmen, the rest were all optional.

I also planned to sneak in some of the free snacks at the buffet, and maybe even bring a Fanta juice bottle back to my dorm.

Founder's Day kept my spirits up for the rest of the week, and for the first time since I'd arrived at Blackwell, I was able to go to lessons with a spring in my step.

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