The Piano Knows Something I Don't Know

Is this real, or is it all in my head?

Is this real, or is it all in my head?

The first thing that I had the next day was a meeting with my adviser at 9:00, but for some reason, Patrick felt the need to wake up at five o'clock in the morning and blast an Elvis Costello song in my ears. I rolled over in bed to face him, worried that I had missed my meeting, but once I saw the time, I rolled back over and tried to muffle the sound with my pillow. "Patrick, go back to bed," I mumbled.

"Come on, Ryan," he said. "The sun is already up, so it's time to get ready. The dining hall opens in only half an hour!"

"Let me get some sleep," I said as I squeezed my eyes shut.

Patrick turned down his music slightly, but it was still too loud for me to get any meaningful sleep, so around seven o'clock, I crawled out of bed. Patrick was already gone, and everyone else in the residence hall was still asleep, so I got ready for my first full day at Kale. Once I was ready to go, I walked to the dining hall, which, like everything else at Kale, was a great distance away from Flack Hall.

I ate alone that day, though I was used to that. I almost always ate alone in high school, but I thought that things might be different in college. I thought that I might be able to find someone who would put up with my habit of building philosophies from pieces of broken memories. Alas, my loneliness seemed to have persisted into college, but it was still early. My luck could still change. At the very least, the dining hall's food was much better than the food at my high school.

After breakfast, I walked past the statue of M.C. Moneybags and headed into the Shufflebottom Center, where I was supposed to meet my adviser. I stood around for a few minutes, unsure of what to do, until a middle aged man in a suit approached me and asked, "Are you Ryan Ross?"

"Yes, I am," I said.

"Follow me," the man said. He led me into an office and said, "I'm Professor Romero, and I'll be your adviser for your first year here at Kale. First of all, let's try and pick a few classes for your first semester. Have you looked over the course catalog yet?"

"A little bit," I said. "I definitely want to take Metaphysics. I feel like I've been questioning my own existence a lot lately. You know, I fell down the stairs in Flack Hall yesterday, and last night, I was wondering if any of it happened at all, but my leg hurt like crazy, so it must have been real. It's like pinching yourself, but stronger. Sometimes you've got to bleed to know that you're alive and have a soul. Then again, all of this only confirms that I'm real. It doesn't say anything about me being alive or having a soul. Maybe I'm a soulless zombie or something and just can't tell..."

Professor Romero rolled his eyes and said, "You must another one of those overly whiny philosophical kids that this institution seems to attract. Anyways, you won't be able to take Metaphysics during your first semester. It requires Introduction to Philosophy as a prerequisite. Do you want me to put you down for that?"

"That's fine," I responded.

"I'll also need to put you in a Freshman Writing Seminar," Professor Romero said. "What else would you like to take? Remember, you should probably get your general education requirements done as quickly as possible."

I groaned, knowing that this meant that I would have to take a math course. "Do I have to take math?" I asked Professor Romero.

"Yes, but we have a number of options for courses that fulfill Kale's math requirement," Professor Romero said as he handed me a sheet of paper with a list of math courses.

I looked over the paper, and almost all of the courses seemed dull, but there was one that caught my eye. "What's Great People of Mathematics?" I asked.