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inbabylontheywept · 10 months

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Kevin vs. Quantum Mechanics

This is an autobiographical piece. Names have been changed for anonymity, but it's otherwise left be. ---

The class's first suspicion of Kevin was that he had, somehow, cheated his way up to this course. He just seemed perpetually confused, and strangely antagonistic of the professor. The weirdest example of this was when he asked what an ion was (in a third year EE class?), and was informed that it referred to any positively or negatively charged particle. It would have been strange enough to ask, but his reply of "Either? That doesn't sound right" sealed him in as a well known character in the class of 19 people.

The real tipping point in our perception of him during a lecture where the professor mentioned practical uses for a neutron beam, and Kevin asked if a beam could be made out of some other neutral material. When asked "Like what?", he replied "An atom with all of its electrons removed." When we pointed out that the protons would make that abomination extremely positively charged, he just replied with "So what if we removed those too?" and then was baffled when we informed him that would just be neutrons.

That's high school level chemistry. Not knowing it was so incredibly strange that I felt like something was off, so I asked him if he'd like to grab lunch. He accepted, we chatted, and I finally began to get a sense of his origin story.

See, Kevin wasn't a junior/senior electrical engineer like the rest of us. Kevin was, in fact, three notable things: A business major, a sophomore, and a hardcore Catholic. All three of those are essential to understanding his scenario.

What had begun all of this was actually a conflict with Kevin and his roommate. Kevin frequently had his fundamental belief in Absolute Good, Absolute Bad, and Absolute Anything pushed back on by his roommate, who was in STEM. Said roommate kept invoking quantum mechanics as his proof against Absolute Knowledge. Kevin was tired of having something that he didn't understand thrown at his convictions, so he decided to take a quantum course to settle things once and for all.

Despite not having any of the pre-reqs.

He'd actually tried to take quantum for physicists first, but the school's physics department wouldn't let him. It's actually pretty strictly regulated, because it is a mandatory class for physics majors. However, because quantum is not mandatory for electrical engineers, there aren't really any built in requirements for the class. It's just assumed that nobody would actually try to take it until their third year because doing so would the be the mental equivalent to slamming your nuts in the car door. Just, pure suffering for no good reason.

Apparently, the counselors had tried to talk him out of it, but if Kevin was one thing, it was stubborn. He'd actually had to sign some papers basically saying "I was warned that this is incredibly stupid, but I refused to listen" in order to take the class.

He was actually pretty nice, if currently unaware of how bad he'd just fucked up. I paid for the lunch, wished him the best, and reported back to the class discord. We'd all been curious about this guy's story, but now that I had the truth, I could share it with the world.

Feelings were mixed. Some people thought he was going to drop out any minute now. Others thought that he wouldn't, be also that convincing him to drop now, while he still could, was the only ethical thing. Others figured that a policy of non-interference was best: The counselors couldn't dissuade him, and if we tried to do the same, he'd probably just think it was STEM elitism trying to guard its little clubhouse. He'd figure out how hard things were, or he'd fail. Either way, it would help him learn more about the world.

We wound up taking the approach of non-interference. If nothing else, understanding his origins gave us more patience when he asked bizarre questions. He wasn't trying to waste our time, he was just trying to cram three years of pre-reqs into a one semester course. He did get a little bit combative sometimes, and we could tell that he was really wracking his brain to try and find some sort of contradiction or error that he could use to bring the whole thing down, but he never could.

First test came by, and he bombed it. Completely unprepared. He'd taken Calc I, but he didn't know how to do integrals yet (that was Calc II). Worse, he was far past the drop date. I imagine most people in his shoes would've stopped struggling. They'd realize they were fucked and just let themselves fail, at least salvaging their other classes grades in the process. Why waste resources on an unwinnable battle?

Kevin never asked questions like that. If he was stupid enough to try it, he was stupid enough to finish it. God bless him.

He invited me to lunch after the test and said that the class was more fascinating than he'd ever imagined, but he didn't know if he'd be able to pass it. He asked if I could help, and I said...maybe. I brought the request to the discord, and from the eight people there I got three volunteers who admired this dork's tenacity. He was in over his head, miles beneath the surface, but his fighting spirit was fucking glorious. If he was willing to go down swinging, we were willing to bust our asses trying to get him caught up.

Some of the stuff was just extra homework we gave to the guy. We told him he needed to learn integrals, stat. We sent him some copies of basic software that can be used to teach the basics of linear circuit equations, and he practiced that game like it was HALO. Just, hours sunk into it. Absolutely godlike.

He was still scrabbling for air at just the surface level of the class, but he'd gone from abysmal failure to lingering on the boundary between life and death. Other people in the class started to learn about Kevin's origin story, and our little circle of four volunteer tutors grew to six. Every day, he had someone trying to help him either catch up in some way, or finish that week's homework. He'd gone from being seen as a nuisance that wasted class time to the underdog mascot.

He was getting twelve hours of personal tutoring a week, on top of three hours of classes, on top of six hours of office hours, on top of the coursework. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this kid was doing 40 hours a week just trying to pass this one single class.

Second test comes around and he gets a 60. He's ecstatic. We're ecstatic. Kid's too young to take out drinking so we just order a pizza and cheer like he just won gold at the Olympics.

After that second test, things hit another tipping point. With so much catch-up under his belt, he was able to focus a lot more on the actual material for the class. A borderline cinematic moment happened when I was trying to get ahead on the homework so that I could put more hours in on my senior project. Nobody else had finished it yet because it wasn't due for another week, so the specifics of the problem I was working on were still a mystery. I went to the professor's office hours and get some pointers, but he wasn't willing to give good hints when the HW wasn't due for another week or so. He said I still had time to think about it, which was true, but I wanted to be able to think about other things. Kevin had watched the whole conversation, waiting for his turn to ask the professor more simple questions, but when I left I got a text from him telling me to hop on zoom.

Kevin had finished it earlier, because Kevin started all of his homework the moment it was assigned. He needed to, in order to make sure that he could get it done on time. He'd finished it the day before, and was able to walk me through it.

From student, to teacher. I'm not exaggerating when I say that he probably saved me eight hours on that assignment. I could've kissed him.

A month or two later, we took the final. As soon as we were done, we six asked Kevin how he did. He was nervous, there was so much new material for him in this class that his retention hadn't been great. Us six were also a little stressed: We were going to pass the class, but the final was hard.

We waited for the results.

And waited. And waited.

Finally, the scores were posted as a table, curve included. From our class of 19 people, 4 withdrew within the deadline, 4 failed, 1 got a C, 8 got B's, and 2 got A's. We could see that the curve for a C was set at 59.2% overall.

We called Kevin. He was crying. End score, 59.2%. Teacher curved the C exactly to his score.

It was a week into winter break so we couldn't gather the forces around for a party like last time, but we were all losing our shit. Kevin was losing his shit. He couldn't believe how stupid he was to try this course, he couldn't believe that six people busted their ass just to make sure he didn't die, and he couldn't believe that the professor basically just passed him out of sheer effort alone.

He said it was the stupidest thing he'd ever done, and while I doubt that, it was outrageously stupid. And yet, I've never been so invested in a fellow student before. I'm prouder of Kevin's C than I am of my own B. I was walking on sunshine for weeks after that. In theory, my senior project was building a functioning washing machine, but in practice, in my heart, it was helping Kevin pass Intro to Quantum for Electrical Engineers.

(And as an epilogue: No, he did not renounce Catholicism and become an atheist like his roommate had hoped. He did walk out changed. I think that being that wrong about something, and realizing it, was a pivotal moment for him. It's hard to be dogmatic once you realize that a lifetime of being wrong feels exactly like a lifetime of being right, right up until the last two seconds of it.)

#writing #Kevin #electrical engineering #college #memoir #biography #college stories #group project #quantum physics #senior project #people are awesome

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scienceandshitpostsdaily · 1 month

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One time when I was in a public speaking class in college this girl gave a persuasive speech on why we should ban GMOs and vaccines because she claimed they’re giving children autism and I sat with my jaw on the floor her entire speech and then next class (2 days later) I had to give my presentation so I scrapped my entire original presentation and did extensive research on the benefits of both and just stared her down the entire time I gave speech and she cried

#I think this exact moment in my life is why I am so comfortable with public speaking nowadays #it was the most powerful I’ve ever felt #me #text #funny #college #college stories #fuck antivaxers #also gmos save millions of people from starvation a year #so just say you prefer your children starved and diseased and don’t understand science.#ur dumb. all antivaxxers and people who are against gmos are stupid

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a-dinosaur-a-day · 9 months

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What’s the story with the bike, the spider, and your arachnophobia 👀 ? If you’re fine with telling of course lol

so in college I lived in a single on one side of campus and my spouse (@plokool) lived in an on-campus apartment on the other side. So we were *constantly* riding our bikes back and forth between our homes.

I've had crippling arachnophobia since I was a kid and saw the Really Wild Animals Creature Feature, because of the dinosaurs, but also had an extremely disturbing segment on black widows that has stuck with me to this day. I even freak out at spiders in video games. Logically I know its irrational, but I can't get rid of it.

Anyways, I was riding my bike from my dorm to his, but I didn't notice that a spider was hanging out on the handlebar. Rather than do anything rational - and I was being a stupid college kid and riding my bike without a helmet, no less - I jettisoned myself from the bike upon seeing the spider, landing with my knees severely bent outwards on the grass. Max had to come and walk me to his apartment (I had made it most of the way there without seeing the spider because I also biked like a maniac at the time and rode like the wind) and I even had to do physical therapy for a while, but it didn't help long term to fix the knees. Those are just. useless now.

#about the blogger #cw spiders #cw arachnophobia #college stories #me and the spouse #not dinosaurs

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romanarose · 1 year

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so there's this guy in my favorite class who interupts the professor and talks long winded comments that are nonsensical and our professor is soooooooo gracious and patient.

But I RAISED MY HAND, started to make a comment, and THE GUY JUST STARTED TALKING!!!! JUST STRAIGHT UP TALKED OVER ME!!! My friend in class, Maggie about lost her goddamn shit on him.

Male history majors are fucking insufferable

#romana personal posts #history major #college stories

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like-this-post-if-you · 1 month

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Like this post if you're in college

#college #college life #college living #college student #college studyblr #collegeblr #college sports #college band #college stories #likes

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robbie-roo · 5 months

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one fun fact about me is I absolutely hate eggs

the smell gets to me and I start gaging the taste is awful I can barely eat scrambled eggs with a fuck ton of cheese if I even taste too much egg in a dish I can't finish it it's made breakfast out really annoying

anyway my college has a little build your own pasta bar where a guy will take your order for ingredients and then will warm it all up on a stove but they don't take names or anything so you just have to wait around and watch for your food which STRESSES ME OUT

however I forgot that on weekends this amazing pasta bar that always completes my meal at this dining hall turns into an omlette bar on the weekends until dinner time (5ish)

so I go to get my pasta and I order mushrooms because I always get mushrooms and marinara and whatever pasta they have that isn't spaghetti (nothing against spaghetti I just get self conscious eating it in public since it's so awkward to eat without getting some on your face) and then I look to point at the sauce I want because I have pretty bad anxiety I often forget the words for what I want as I'm ordering and I see there's no sauce

and then I shift to look at the pastas and see its just two tubs of egg and the guy taking my oder is like "...just mushrooms?" and the guy who usually cooks the pasta goes "its omlettes today" and I'm thinking 'oh shit he recognizes me? is my anxiety that memorable?' because I always look anxious as FUCK waiting for my food around dinner time because it gets really hectic

and I panic because there's already mushrooms on the pan and so I say "oh that's fine" and order sausage because that'll help mask the flavor of egg right?

and then I'm texting my roomate brytni and I'm like "bro I fucked up" and tell her about all this and then say "I didn't even ask for cheese I fucked up" because the only way I can even choke down eggs is if I can basically only taste the cheese and as I'm waiting two other orders come out and I'm not paying attention so I try to peek at them and tell if it's mine and as I'm doing so the pasta guy kinda shows me how he's working on mine next and I'm like

"ah haha sorry!" and sit down and my anxiety is going CRAZY and finally my order comes out he holds it out to me specifically instead of putting it on the counter and then asks if I want cheese

he didn't ask anyone else that I noticed and I'm like "omfg a way out" so I say yes please and apologize (idk why) and take my food and go to choke this thing down

I am three bites in and it's too egg- the smell is getting to me the mushrooms can't save me the cheese isn't enough I haven't even had half of this I feel so bad

anyways that's my fun little story I hate eggs

#i hate eggs #omlette #dining hall stories #fun fact about me #college student #college stories #roomate beloved is judging me for not just backing out #i was in too deep bro #also how the fuck did he know i wanted cheese #did he somehow see my text to brytni?#theres no way right?#also he recognized me?#this dining hall gets probably like 2000 students a day

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fadeawaywithyou · 2 years

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i love being a classics major tomorrow i have a sacrifice at 1 and i told my professor i'd be missing class or late and he just went "as a medievalist, i have to support the classicists. have fun" and reminded me to get the notes from someone else in class. this is great

#this is my classics propaganda #i speak #its for homecoming but idc i get to wear a toga #classics major #ancient history #history major #college stories #the classcis #classicist

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pugbrainey · 11 months

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Today I had an online video call lesson with my animation and illustration teacher. During the lesson he confused me with another student who has a very similar name to mine and that made me a little annoyed since I don’t even go by the name that’s displayed on my Google account. Instead I go by a shortening of it. I jokingly wrote in the video call chat “I wish I could change my display name to {shortening} >:(” My teacher, the 50 year old sweetheart that he is, replied with “:-(”

His reasoning? He was being sad with me

#.txt post #txt post #college stories #I genuinely love that man #He's very kind

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smorp-a-dorp · 8 months

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Last year, I tried to employ a college friend making strategy that I have dubbed the Plastic Dinosaur Method™.

It went well for like a day or so, (I gave some to my roommates and like,,, one other person) but it quickly ground to a halt when I weirded someone out with it. (Granted, I showed up at their dorm down the hall from mine after they wrote their dorm number on my dorm door’s whiteboard and I went to say hi, so maybe that freaked them out.)

Anyways, I transferred schools (for unrelated reasons) and I’ve been employing the Plastic Dinosaur Method™ during marching band camp and people are digging it. 👍👍

#college #college adventures #college era #college experience #college friends #college is wild #college kids #college life #college moment #college posting #college stories #college stuff #college tag #collegeblr #college things #marching band #smorp original

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sad-guinness · 9 months

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Let me regale you with the time I nearly died, lost my wallet, lost my passport, lost my student ID, and had to drink hot sauce for a week as food all bc I got too drunk at a Deaf toga party

So, nearly 5 years I get invited to a toga party the Deaf fraternity is throwing. My (at the time) queer platonic partner and I got some white fabric and alcohol and started pregaming with seltzer. I had maybe 3 or 4 seltzers and keep in mind I hadn’t eaten all day. We get toga’d up, drink another seltzer and then Uber to the party. I’m already pretty blasted because we had all those seltzers within an hour and a half.

We get to the frat house and it’s everything you’d expect a college toga party to be. I don’t remember how I ended up with a Marg-A-Rita in my hands but I did and was chugging. My next memory I was in the bathroom nearly throwing up. I don’t know how long I’ve been at the party but I call an Uber home. Lo and behold, my wallet is on the street and I hadn’t even noticed it was gone. Thankful for noticing, I grab my wallet and get into my Uber.

The next thing I remember was waking up face down in my own vomit nearly choking on it. I’m in my bed but my entire bed is covered in vomit. I live alone.

I go to wash my comforter which took the brunt of the vomit but it’s too big for the campus washing machines so I had to wash it in my shower with dish soap.

I notice some time later my wallet is missing. I immediately freeze all my accounts and search outside for my wallet. It’s gone. I text the Uber driver from the night before. He doesn’t have it.

It had everything in there. My drivers license, my student ID, cash, my passport card, my credit cards, everything. I had to tell my parents I got too drunk and made a mistake. Thankfully they mailed me my spare state ID so I had some form of communication.

But I still had no money, and no way to receive money. All I had was a bottle of hot sauce in my pantry and the knowledge that within a few weeks my credit cards would be replaced.

#me #story time #drunk #college stories

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dorkylittleweirdo · 1 year

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Artist renditions of my professor bullying me in class, part one

#school stuff #college stuff #college stories #emt #emt school #emt student #emergency medical technician #there's more #but that's for another time #my art

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inbabylontheywept · 10 months

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The Condom Bomber

The crux of the story is Brother Dean. Brother Dean was…is…a hate preacher. Red or blue, everyone agreed on that. His origins and his motivations, those were a little more mysterious. Different groups had their own legends. I had a class with a guy that was part of the campus pro-life movement, and the tale he gave me is the one that I give the most credence to. According to him, Brother Dean had started out as a “normal” pro-life preacher. He’d gone around campus, led parades, given speeches… And then he’d gotten punched in the face.

This led to a lawsuit against the school. Something about failing to provide adequate protection? The main result was that he got something like half a mil. Half a mil is an incredible amount if you’re still working, but he’d tried to use the money to fund a sort of pro-life career, and it had just… trickled down. Ten years later he was running dead low on funds, and had taken to the particularly dumb strategy of trying to get punched in the face again. You know. For economic reasons. It had become kind of a vicious cycle: He’d started off saying some objectionable shit to try and goad someone into taking the punch. The worse the shit he said was, the harder it became for him to find work doing anything else, and the harder it became for him to find work doing anything else, the less he had to lose by saying really objectionable shit. Throw in two years of living on ramen, and he was so desperate to get punched that he was quoting the Westboro Baptists. If you know, you know. The pro-life group, to their credit, hated him the most out of anyone. They viewed him as the ultimate sellout, someone who was actively making their positions and beliefs look worse by the day, solely for his own enrichment. The other conservative groups held him in the same regard. The rest of the campus hated him for simpler reasons. It would be difficult to find anyone more detested anywhere else on site. Brother Dean’s antithesis was the Trojan Warrior. TW was a normal student by day, but maybe once a month or so he’d don his hoplite armor and roam around, handing out free condoms. Trojan condoms. It was kind of his shtick. Between the costume, and the whole character that he had going on, most people didn’t really recognize his alter ego. I myself am pretty good with faces, so one day I noticed he was behind me in the foodcourt and decided to thank him by paying for his smoothie. Small tangent, but if you’re looking to get good stories, buying lunches for interesting people works like magic. TW decided that he was going to thank me for thanking him by giving me something like 10 feet of condom roll. I was mortified, aggressively single, and on SSRI’s. He was not sure how many of those were permanent. I wasn’t either. He wound up giving me just a handful, and said that if nothing else, they could probably be used as water balloons. I accepted. Who doesn’t like water balloons?

I finished my lunch with the warrior and left, considering targets for the "balloons". I passed by Brother Dean near the main commons and had my lightbulb moment. I spent a few minutes watching him from a distance, trying to find the optimal angle to get him without getting caught on camera (he always had someone filing in the background, it was a necessary thing for his hopeful future lawsuit). The time delay was useful for helping me realize that it really wasn't worth it. The sun had been bearing down so hard that the glue in my shoes had melted, and getting him wet would be a favor that day.

So, mildly disappointed, I shelved my dream and left.

A week later the monsoons hit. I left one class and ran to a campus computer commons to try and get some shelter and study between classes. Just before I got through the door, I saw Brother Dean, umbrella in hand, setting up his speaker and mic. He wasn't technically allowed this far into campus (the commons were owned by the city) but he'd gone to where his audience was and security was probably holed up somewhere cozy. I could hardly blame them.

I made it up to the second floor and started studying when the mic picked up. All glass buildings are not very soundproof. He was loud, and he was annoying, and he was outside a library, under a balcony, and-

And I had condoms. Water balloon condoms.

And he was under a balcony.

I put my laptop away, pulled out my condom roll, and went to the bathroom. I wasn’t sure how big a condom could actually stretch, so I just kept filling it until it was about the size of basketball. Maybe a smaller watermelon? And thus armed, I waddled my way out into the halls. I cannot emphasize enough just how unsubtle this was. I was cradling this big, overfilled condom like some sort of phallic ghost baby, and it was so heavy that I sort of had to squat as I went. People saw me. Lots of people saw me. I passed by one room full of computer science students, all learning C++, and three of them waved at me. And I waved back in that my-arms-are-full-but-I’m-excited-to-see-you-too way, where you jut your wrist up a little bit and flap your hand around excitedly. I did, eventually, make it to the balcony. The building’s high ceilings made the second-floor thing kind of a misnomer: I was easily forty feet up. I scooched my way to the edge, and the view I had… it was perfect. Brother Dean was directly underneath, thank God. If he’d been even seven or eight feet out, I’m not sure if I could’ve shotput the condom-bomb far enough to hit him directly. Better yet his cameraman was only a few feet away from him, far too close to catch any action going up 40 feet above. I managed to wrestle the payload onto the balcony, and with a gentle push, I sent it and Dean to destiny. I realized that I’d made a mistake almost as soon as the condom began to fall. You know that sound that bombs make in cartoons, that long drawn out whistle? The condom made that sound. I had a second education in the seriousness of my mistake when the condom hit Dean’s umbrella. It did not pop. Of course it didn’t pop. I had no experience with condoms, I swear to you, I promise, I did not know how much they could stretch. You can fit your whole leg into them. You can fit them over whole park benches. A gallon and a half of water was nothing compared to that. It broke Dean’s umbrella. It hit the top, and it snapped the stem like a twig, and then-

Violence. Unspeakable violence. It clipped Dean’s shoulder and stretched down to his knees before recoiling back to its original shoulder height. It did not bounce. It floated in space, no wasted energy in the collision. One hundred percent of the kinetic energy, all 3300 Joules of it, were discharged into this sad wretch of a man. He did not collapse. There was no time for that. He rotated on his axis. It was as if the hand of God had reached down and grabbed him about his waist, only to twist. In a fraction of a second, his head filled the space where his ass had been and his ass filled the space where his head had been, and then his cheek, carried by the shuriken motion of his body, slammed into the pavement with a noise like Shaq slam dunking a porkchop. Maybe wetter.

He did not move.

I panicked.

I want to make it clear: I did not mean to assault this man. I meant to get him wet and embarrassed. But I also have to confess that this was a beating. Mike Tyson himself can only put about 1600 Joules into one of his punches, and if he hit me I would bounce off five walls before I fell. I would not wish 3300 Joules upon anyone.

I walked into the building and sat myself in the back of the C++ class. The people next to, to my immense and eternal gratitude, did not question why I was wet.

A minute later, Brother Dean stormed into the building with his microphone.

He yelled. He screamed. He hollered. He informed the entire world that he had been assaulted, with a condom, by someone on the second floor. I was ecstatic that he was alive.

Every person in that class knew who had brought this hell upon them. Every single one of them knew it was me. And if I’d done this to someone else, some Steven Crowder, some Ben Shapiro, someone would’ve thrown me to the wolves. It would have only taken one person in that room of sixty. But Brother Dean was hated by everyone, literally everyone, and so the entire class sat in silence.

Some of that silence was gleeful, and some of it was bored, and some of it, a very small amount, was directly disapproving, but even the disapproving silence carried an understanding. A note of, “Yes, yes, that was very irresponsible, and you should not do that again, but who could blame you? Something needed to happen. Not that something, but…something.”

Security could be given grace to ignore the man when it was raining, and he was just outside the building, but they were not given such grace when he was inside with a microphone. Just a few short minutes later, a golfcart pulled up, and he was summarily marched out. There was maybe a minute of silence after that before the professor announced that his class was not open to visitors.

I left. He’d made his point.

It was a few weeks before I saw Brother Dean again, and his black eye still hadn’t healed all the way when I did. He was, however, still preaching the same old things as always. Percussive maintenance works better on vacuum tubes than human brains. I will say that he definitely made a point to stay away from balconies after that. And the next time it rained, I actually went out to watch him put his speaker and his mic into the back of a wagon and wheel it off the campus.

It appeared that he’d developed some opinions about the kind of weather he was willing to preach hate in.

#writing #writblr #creative fiction #the last tag is for legal reasons #college stories #biography #memoir #hijinks

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