Can't Stop the Questions

Chapter 13: Back to the Football Team

After the holidays end, and the VAs return to class, one of the sophomore football players meets with Pablo before class in the locker room.

"Fuck! Tomorrow is the deadline for the World History extra credit, and it has to do with the consequences of the French and Indian War in North America" George, an offensive guard, complains after the end of the morning weight training session. "Since you're playing quiz bowl, Holy Beggar, surely you understand what to do" George starts begging to help him, and then sobs. "Can you please help me?"

"I didn't do it either. I think we can get it done tonight, but we're going to need every footballer taking World History to get this done" Pablo breaks the news to the offensive guard. "We will need to stay after school. However, as helpful my own girlfriend could have been, she is away at a basketball game tonight"

The problem is that Pablo grew distant from the football team after the season ended. He did next to nothing with us, not even academically, forcing us to rely on our girlfriends to get academic help in a pinch, George reflects on the consequences of Pablo playing quiz bowl on his football teammates. And obviously, some of us struggle to hold on to a girlfriend.

In the meantime, since Pablo is reminded of the VAs playing on the road today, he first asks Audrey by text whether he can get Nadine to help him with World History extra credit.

Audrey's answer comes quickly. "I trust you can work with Nadine without turning it to an opportunity to cheat on her" she texts with an implicit subtitle of romantically or academically.

"That sucks; your girlfriend is clearly a brain" George sighs.

"There's about a dozen of us taking World History on the football team and I can't do everything alone" Pablo retorts. "If you rely solely on AI to get the paper done, you won't understand anything"

"What do you mean, I won't understand anything if I just use AI to get the paper done?" George asks him.

"If you just enter the question as a prompt in ChatGPT, you might get a serviceable paper, but AI is otherwise a black box, especially if you use the output as-is. There's a reason why the French and Indian War was chosen for the extra credit"

"Why?" another user of the weight room, also taking World History, asks both footballers.

"Because of its importance in understanding what led to the American Revolution" Pablo explains to the other two. "I won't go into detail right now, though I am doing this because I did next to nothing with the football team after the season ended"

And Louisiana, during the French and Indian War, saw next to no fighting, but I have the impression that we need to talk a little bit about the French and Indian War in Louisiana as well, Pablo starts thinking about the paper as it relates to the writing. He then contacts the other footballers in the World History course about whether, and who they could bring as well, to get the extra credit done. And boy did some of them need it.

He then realizes that a few of them already finished it, namely, Ethan. And those who need the extra credit most accepted to come, since some of them need to keep an eye on the no-pass, no-play, or any other GPA target. 2.5, 3.25 or 3.5 typically. Not many of that subgroup even plan on having other people in tow. Of these people, he knew most of them are in a relationship, but their love interests are often unremarkable academically or otherwise in no position to help them on this assignment.

And it turns out that Nadine already submitted the World History extra credit as well, so she won't go to this meeting over it.

"Nadine can't come, damn it! Time for plan B: Lilina" Pablo then texts Lilina about asking for help on homework about the French and Indian War and later turns to George. "Don't go around thinking that I'd be cheating on Audrey for Lilina!"