When In Doubt - Freshman Year

Chapter 4

Matt

The first week of classes started on the Wednesday after that Labor Day weekend, and it'd gone by faster than anyone had even expected.

After making sure he'd been woken up extra early to have plenty of time to find his classes, Matt had only gotten lost once, but luckily still had five minutes to spare before he'd been considered tardy, terrified at the idea of everyone staring at him if he'd walked in late. He'd recognized a few people he'd met over the last couple of days, and quite a few of them had been from his floor, so even that small sense of familiarity comforted him as he'd adjusted to his schedule.

The professors were all various levels of eccentric, which had been expected; Matt had always felt like it'd been a pre-requisite for any good art instructor to be extremely weird in some way. What he hadn't expected was how some of them had gone right into their exercises instead of just taking the whole day to read off their syllabus.

Matt had taken the summer off from drawing' he'd needed to work to get some extra cash to save, so he'd been was a little rusty on his technique. Their instructor had wanted quick, gestural, and choppy marks down in each student's sketchbook as a warm-up.

The worst part by far had been when they'd received their supply lists for their course. The instructors had claimed they'd only asked for the bare-minimum, but it'd still all added up to about $250 per student. There was also only one art shop in all of Menomonie, so unless someone had a car to drive to a Michaels store in the next town a half hour drive from there, Mike's Art & Design up on the corner of Main and Broadway was where everyone had to go.

While there'd been a collective groan at all their money spent in that one transaction, Matt had felt a bit of comradery with Peter and Jack as they'd dejectedly exited the store together, and had lugged their large plastic shopping bags back down towards campus, speculating ways to complain to the board of directors of the Art & Design program for making them spend so much money.

Soon it was the weekend, and even amongst the freshman, there'd been a lot of buzz spreading about all the parties celebrating getting through the first half a week of school. Matt hadn't been expecting to do anything; Peter, Tony and Jack hadn't seem like big partiers and were probably going to hang out in the dorms, which was fine, but that's not what Matt wanted to do with his time at UW-Stout. He'd done plenty of quiet weekends back home, and he'd wanted a change of pace.

Later that day, when he'd joined Tony, Peter, and Jack for dinner in the commons, Peter had gotten message on his phone.

"Hey guys, Heather says there's people pregaming in her room before they check out the frats, did we want to go?" Peter's bespectacled eyes looked around at their booth.

Jack scoffed. "No fucking way, I don't want to be surrounded by a bunch of douchetards trying to get laid by a bunch of dumb sluts."

Tony had thrown a side look. "Dude, I'm sure most of those girls are ones you've hit on this week, so are they still sluts then?"

"If they decide to fuck those frat guys and not me, then yes, they are major sluts."

Matt hadn't been able to understand Jack's logic on a lot of things, especially when it'd came to girls. His way of flirting was to hit on a girl, and if he'd gotten rejected, he'd simply slide down to the next one like it was a speed-dating line. Matt had given him props for his persistence, but at the same time, using the same lines over and over and expecting different results hadn't made much sense.

"I say why not? It might be fun," Matt replied.

"We could go for a little bit at least," Peter contemplated. "See if they live up to the hype?"