Don't Forget to Write

My Business Launches

All of my fellow students were up-in-arms about midterms, as if they had forgotten that this was a part of the curriculum every semester. On the first week of each semester professors gave out a syllabus with the dates of the midterm, along with every other assignment and test, and what percentage of your grade each would be worth. Yet, every semester, the students acted as if the teachers were unjustly assaulting their intelligence, like they had been sucker-punched by an old guy who secretly wanted to see them fail their class. The ambiance around campus became anxious, bordering hysterical, which I'm sure didn't help anybody focus on studying. More importantly, it annoyed the shit out of me. Despite the heavy review I'd have to do on subjects from the couple of weeks following my concussion, I felt confident enough. I wasn't shitting my pants crying in the library, anyway, which was better than most.

One day in Theories of Personality, Rich was going back and forth with himself on the age-old arguments of nature vs nurture. How much of an individual's personality was predetermined by their genes? How much is someone affected by their environment? Where did these notions overlap each other? By the end, he had worked out a theory in which exposure to certain environments triggered certain genes. For example, a person with the genetic disposition to me a heavy smoker would never be a heavy smoker if they weren't regularly exposed to an environment of smoking. But what choices did humans have in selecting their environments? How would our "choices" in our environment affect us? And finally, he was asking the big question. Is there such a thing as free will?

Rich liked to cold-call students during lectures to ask questions, check for understanding, or just to get a conversation going - sometimes in a different direction than he expected to go depending on the student. When he was about to call on someone, I would look down at my desk and pretend to take notes, making myself as non-noticeable as possible. In class I didn't like raising my hand or getting involved. I could go a whole semester without most classmates even knowing my name, and I liked it that way. But today Rich mentioned me by name as he paraphrased a paper I wrote on this very topic; free will. Rich said," according to our young philosopher, Peter," gesturing to me, "every decision a person makes is one based in free will, but the choice is between two predetermined fates." I wanted to tell him that I stole that quote from a book, but I was too embarrassed to talk. "The different paths and lifestyles you can lead have been laid out for you, but you get to pick some of the lefts, rights, ups and downs. Sounds almost like an RPG, or a choose your own adventure story. There's a limited number of ways that it can end, but the person gets to decide which one, and is also allowed to arrive at that ending through a path of their own general accord. An interesting take on it." Rich finished in a proud and boastful kind of way. He looked at me when he was done so I nodded and looked down at my desk again. I could hear murmured approvals from some peers. I waited for someone to refute the idea, because that's what happened in this class, debate over philosophies and ideas that never ended in a definitive answer, instead bringing us only many more questions. Such is the nature of the human brain. Luckily, class ended just then, so nobody got the chance, and I wouldn't have to debate my simulation-style pre-determined fates ideology.

Rich handed out a slip with the instructions for his midterm on it (some students groaned). It was a fifteen-page paper that we could write at home, with the use of notebooks and the internet, about the different personality theorists we had covered thus far and how each one's different ideologies affected and blended in with our own implicit theories. It seemed like fun, much more creative than the 4 or 5 question exams I'd be having in my engineering courses. As I walked down the hall somebody said: "Hey, Pete, right?"

"Yeah," I turned.

"I'm Amir,"

"Hey Amir, what's up?"

"Rich spoke high praise of your writing in there."

"It was a bit embarrassing."

"Well, don't get too flustered. I have a business proposition for you."

"What is it?"

"If you can write Rich's mid-term paper for me, I'll give you $300."

"No shit."

"Yes shit." He said, nodding his head. "I have too many other midterm projects to do. I'm an architecture major and I have to complete a scaled model of a building that turned out to be a bit more complicated than I thought. So if you do this for me, as long as you get at least a C, you get $300." I didn't respond. After a few seconds he added, "and, if you get an A, I'll give you an extra $100."

Still, I didn't respond. Not because I was trying to pull a business trick or come off as a tough negotiator, but because I genuinely didn't know how to respond. He opened his wallet and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. "Consider this a down payment. What do you say?"

I shrugged and said, "Well, I say we're in business," and shook Amir's hand, taking the hundred in the same motion. "If you know anybody else looking for a helping hand on their midterm papers, let me know." I figured a lot of kids in this school had academic issues, and I had my financial ones, so maybe we could all help each other out.

"You got it, chief," he winked at me and walked away.

Not having much else to do with my day, I went to the library and began working on Amir's paper. I sat near a window so that I could watch the rain fall outside. I liked the sound of traffic driving through puddles and making splashes. I liked the way taxis and traffic lights looked, clean and saturated, almost bright on a dark day. I liked how people ran across the street in their trench coats. Something about precipitation brought comfort.

Rich's assignment was due about a week earlier than most other midterms, so I thought if I returned this paper to Amir quickly enough, he could find me some other customers and I could make another few hundred by the end of October. Hell, I might be able to spoil myself and Bruno with some bacon, or even some blueberries to put in our oatmeal.