Break of Dawn

03 | ill-advised

THERE WERE many places Rory would like to spend her late afternoon on a Friday, the Advising Center was definitely not one of them.

She had received an email from her advisor a couple of weeks back, and after postponing their meeting three times, she had finally gave in.

That's how she found herself sitting at one of the chairs of the reception of the Advising Center. The room was relatively big, the white walls were filled with motivational posters and a big mahogany shelf held a plethora of magazines and pamphlets. The decor was outdated and the color scheme rather questionable. Whoever thought yellow settees and a navy blue carpet could be considered a good combination definitely needed some lessons in design or at least a visit to the ophthalmologist. The room smelled musty, probably something to do with the old carpet, and Rory's nose itched while she scrolled through her Instagram feed.

"Miss Scavo?" Mrs. Jiang called and Rory snapped her attention off her phone and got up.

Wendy Jiang had been Rory's advisor since the beginning of her junior year. She was relatively tall — somewhere close to Rory's 5'9 — and was usually sporting some well tailored dress and peep toes. Today was no different, the black sheath dress contrasted against her pale skin and matched the charcoal hair that reached her shoulders. She wore a dark lipstick and a the most precise winged eyeliner Rory had ever seen.

"How have you been, Aurora?" Mrs Jiang asked the moment Rory took the seat across from her.

Her office looked better than the waiting room. The ugly blue carpet was still there, but the rest of the room was rather monochromatic, with white oak furniture and white walls. The only other color came from a weird abstract blue painting hanging on the wall behind the desk.

"Good, thank you," Mrs. Jiang was not one for the small talk and, after many failed attempts of asking things back at her, Rory had stopped trying.

"How is your schedule this semester? Are you enjoying your classes?"

"Yeah, it's all good."

"Well, I got your grades from last term, your GPA is overall okay," Her tone was flat as she looked at the computer screen "I see your Statistics grades are bellow your average, so I'd advise you to pay more attention to that. I know your minor GPA doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's really important that your cum GPA is good for your future resume"

Rory nodded absentmindedly, trying her best to feign an interested look on her face while her mind wandered in thoughts of what she'd have for dinner.

"You dropped your internship at the Lacrosse women's team, why's that? Were there any problems?"

Rory had worked with the female Lacrosse team for a year and a half. Although Lacrosse was far from being her sport of choice, it had been the only position she had managed to get that would help her complete the internship hours required for the Sports Management masters scholarship she wanted. Granted, she had gotten the job because it was an all-female team, one where ninety five percent of her peers were also women and they weren't as biased as the all-male sports teams.

"No, not at all," Rory said "I need a spot at a more notorious team in order to apply for my master's, otherwise I won't get the scholarship."

"For what I know they are the biggest team on campus."

"No, they are not," Rory scoffed "We have a bunch of bigger teams, such as football and basketball."

"But those are men's only," Mrs. Jiang pressed condescendingly.

Here we go again, she thought.

"Yeah, for players, sure," Rory drawled mockingly, not waiting to correct the fact that the school had a female Basketball team "Good thing I don't want to play, huh?"