𝙸 𝙲𝚊𝚗'𝚝 𝙲𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚜

𝚂𝟹𝙴𝟷: 𝙿𝚒𝚙𝚎𝚛 𝙶𝚎𝚝𝚜 𝚆𝚎𝚒𝚛𝚍

Read this New York Times article for a list of major SCOTUS decisions made in 2022—there's more than just Dobbs v. Jackson: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/06/21/us/major-supreme-court-cases-2022.html

For information on the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act, please visit the official Break Free from Plastic Pollution website: https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/

Inspired by Community S3E2: "Geography of Global Conflict."

Piper POV

Piper always thought she hated boring. Boring means beige and grey walls when you just want to paint your bedroom seafoam green like every other pre-teen. Boring means eating your ice cream out of a dish instead of a waffle cone. Boring means listening to yacht rock instead of the Barenaked Ladies. All her life, Piper was convinced that if she looked up 'boring' in the dictionary, a picture of her dad's secretary would be there.

She didn't realize it at the time, but during the college admissions process, Piper must have pulled out a thesaurus and found the antonym for 'boring.' Yes, that's right. If you Google some opposite words for boring and then click on images, there's a picture of a shiny balloon arch outside the New Rome Community College library.

For some reason, Piper never really saw herself at twenty-one years old in the same place she was when she was nineteen, but here she is, starting her junior year at this completely not boring college! And what do you know? She finally picked a major. Piper figured with all of that debating and persuading she likes to do that it might not be a bad idea to major in political science with a focus on international relations. She still has no idea what she wants to do with that kind of degree—most of the other students in the politics department have full-time internships this semester—but the good news is that she can just apply to law school or something if she can't come to a decision.

And if things really don't work out, well, she's got a decent body, and there are plenty of clubs here in SoCal.

But she digresses, as many ADHD college students do. The point is that this year is going to be normal and boring. Piper is going to do homework, go to some parties, buy too much Starbucks, and then cry during finals week like every other college student in America. Hell, the most exciting thing that's going to happen this year is the party inside Piper's stomach after she eats the dining hall food.

Hazel Levesque dives under a purple and yellow balloon arch and greets Piper on the quad. "Piper! Did you get my Evite?"

There is no, how was your summer? Hazel, in the twenty-first century, asks Piper if she received an Evite. Nobody uses Evite anymore. Piper doesn't even have an account on that site.

"Uh, no. Should I have?" she asks.

"Yeah," Hazel says, "but you can just check for it when we get to the study room! That way, I can tell you and Annabeth all about it together!"

"Sure," Piper says. A normal person might find this kind of behavior from Hazel weird, but Piper knows her friend well enough to know that whatever Evite is sitting in her inbox must be important to her friend.

And then she sees Octavian in a security guard uniform, his hand on a taser attached to his belt. "Keep it moving, people! I'm looking at you, freshman!"

"Is that what I think it is?" Piper asks.

Hazel shrugs. "It's kind of weird that they hire students as campus security officers, but I guess they're desperate for workers."