Wonderland

❄B1❄ An Engineer With No Math Class

Chapter One

Brayden

An Engineer With No Math Class

August 30

The day of college orientation, I was fucked.

With registration at least.

Back when I was deciding on which college to go to, I was contemplating between Montana State University and the University of Washington. In the end, I chose the UW, in part because I got direct admit into their computer science department, which, according to numerous sources, was fucking hard to get into as a freshman. Believing I was privileged to be part of that small percentage of direct admits, I committed to this school two days before the national college decision date.

This put me in a terrible position in signing up for an orientation date, as all the early, good dates were gone. So now, sitting in front of a computer in the UW computer lab at Mary Gates Hall, I realized just how little choices I had for my fall quarter schedule. I was lucky enough to get CSE 142, a coding class, but I wasn't lucky enough to nab a spot in Math 126. I was able to skip Math 124 and Math 125 because I got college credit from the math classes I took in community college, but fuck—

I can't take math until winter quarter. This sucked shit.

"You can always sign up for our text alerts," my orientation leader explained, as I recounted my problem to him. "If someone drops the course and you immediately go into MyPlan and register, you might be able to nab a spot before someone else does."

I sighed frustratingly.

"How the hell am I supposed to succeed as a computer scientist when I don't even have a math class to take?" I growled.

"I'm sorry, dude. Unfortunately, that's how it is in college."

In the end, I was only able to register for Chemistry 142, CSE 142, and English 131.

Fuck my life. I need math.

College orientation lasts for two days. You don't get to register until the second day, which I found ridiculous. Actually, I found the whole orientation ridiculous. Two days for this shit? Seriously, we're doing nothing but just walking around campus. I could do that during my own free time.

And friends?

Yeah, right. There's no way you can make friends here, because after orientation, you'll probably never see them again.

I didn't want to be alone for the next two days, though, so I befriended a guy named Vincent. He was chill and all, but man, he talked a lot. I'm not even kidding here. His mouth was like the motor on a boat: fast and loud and annoying. I pretended like it didn't bother me, though, and smiled whenever the time called for it. The dude reminded me of that one guy in Glee—you know, the gay, tall guy with the freckles and the high voice? I keep forgetting his name. Was it Burt or something?

Our orientation leader, Michael, was currently showing us around the Husky Union Building, the HUB for short. Inside the building, there was an arcade downstairs complete with a bowling alley, pool tables, and pinball machines; there was a food court, a barbershop, and a bookstore on the second floor of the building, and on the upper floors from the second floor, there were ball rooms and meeting rooms.

The building was simply beautiful.

"Alright, guys, we're heading over to Odegaard Library now to complete a survey about your experience here at orientation," Michael said, when he led our group over to an ugly brick building. There were around fourteen kids in my orientation group, three-fourths of them male being as I was part of the math and science orientation group, which means that the majority of the people in my group were pursuing engineering majors. "After this, we'll meet up one more time before heading over to the Greek columns to meet up with the rest of the other orientation groups. After Alana makes the closing speech, you are all free to go."