In which Daniel Wolfert is introduced to the reader, uses some choice vulgarity, and comes to a pleasing revelation about the university he attends.
Once upon a time, in a university that you or someone you know is likely to attend or have attended, there lived a sophomore music composition major named Daniel Jacob Flores Wolfert. Daniel had two older sisters,two loving (and slightly intimidating) parents, an adorable, rather fat golden retriever named Cinnamon and a profound love for sitting in Starbucks and writing (as he was doing when this was written). Daniel Wolfert, needless to say, is me, and on the morning of this short tale, Daniel Wolfert was also fast asleep.
I had spent the better part of the previous night (or very, very early morning, if you prefer) at the LiveGreen House studying with those house members that were in his Asian Languages and Cultures 310 class, “Death and Desire in Pre-Modern Japanese Literature”, for their midterm that afternoon. Studying, in this case, was a word that primarily entailed rolling on the floor and eating ice cream while other students proposed potential answers to the open-ended, vaguely baffling questions concerning Buddhism, women, and Heian Japan. I digress, however.
After such an intensive study session, lasting long into the wee hours of the morning, I was exhausted when I collapsed into my bed, thinking only of the Japanese Literature Midterm looming ahead and not of the Music Theory Test I had in only five hours. When I awoke that morning seven hours later, I was therefore horrified to see the time on my bedside clock and leaped from my bed, employing some exceptional profanity that I shan’t repeat here. I hurriedly opened my webmail so as to send an email to my music theory professor apologizing for missing the test and begging to take it with penalty. I then dressed and went to my 11 o’clock class, my stomach churning as I awaited his response.
To my enormous relief, he replied an hour later, asking me to come to his office and take it with a 25% penalty, I finished the short exam quickly and left his office, disappointed that, after having a somewhat less-than-satisfactory grade on a previous music theory test, I had missed this opportunity to ace this one.
I am not telling you this, however, to demonstrate my own ineptitude or inability to manage my time appropriately, and I certainly do not mean to represent the school as oversleeping poor test-takers. On the contrary, I usually manage my time very well, and have never before slept through a class (let a alone a test). What I want to bring your attention to is this: in a different school, and most of all in a larger one, I never would have had the opportunity to make up that missed test. In a larger school, had I approached the professor about it, he might have genuinely asked “Do you go here?” But I am fortunate enough to go to a smaller school, with a small music program where mistakes can be made without the world falling to pieces.
And so, after a somewhat terrifying week of midterms, I came to Starbucks with my laptop and wrote this post, drowning my sorrows in green tea and the Metropolitan Market’s delightful samosas as I introduced myself to you, dear reader. Thus closes our tale of Midterm Madness, and begins the delightful, disastrous adventure of Daniel Wolfert as a LoggerBlogger…
