“Good morning, class.  Please take your seats, we have quite a bit of material to cover today and I’d like to get started.”

The professor began her usual Monday morning spiel.  Every Monday we have “quite a bit of material” to cover and she always would “like to get started.”  I frankly don’t care that we have quite a bit of material and I don’t really want to get started.

The professor began to lecture and I began to tune her out.  We were like a well oiled machine, she and I, the same routine every Monday without fail.  She speaks, I ignore.  The first ten minutes of class went according to plan until she threw a nail into the cogs of our machine when my selective-hearing ears picked up the words “group project.”  My head snapped up.

“I’m assigning your semester project which will be due three weeks from today.  You and your group are responsible for creating a presentation on a statistical approach to calculus.  I want you to collect data and present graphs and tables analyzing your data.  Since there is an even number of you I will be splitting you into pairs alphabetically.”

The professor began to call out pairs of students who would be working together.  I frantically ran through the alphabet in my head.  A, B, C…D.  C comes before D.  Carlin.  I’m Carlin and she’s Davies.  Is it possible?  Could it be that there are no more C’s after me? Oh my gosh I don’t think-

“Spencer Carlin, Ashley Davies.”

I just kind of stared at the professor blankly.  I’m not that excellent at processing unexpected situations.

My counterpart, however, performed famously, per usual.

“Hey, you’re Spencer, right?  I’m Ashley.”

I continued to stare blankly.  Luckily for me, the wires connected and I quickly jumped out of my stupor.

“Yeah, it’s nice to meet you Ashley.  So… how ‘bout this calc project?”  I suggested dumbly.  Dumb.  Really, that’s nice Carlin.  Get over it, she’s just a girl like any other girl.

“Haha I know, right?  Gotta have a little calc in your life, I guess.”  She flashed me a smile and I noticed a slight crinkle in the bridge of her nose.