Planning Our Final Project

I head into the small classroom that we have our Advanced Basics of Sociology class in half the week. Abdul is supposed to meet me here in like five minutes, along with Herman Jacksen, a fourth year on the older end of things. Yesterday, Magister Orsini assigned us our final project groups, and this is gonna be our division of labor meeting. Herman is a good sort. He was in Methods with me and Abdul, and seems generally reliable. Nothing to write home about, you know, but he knows his stuff and will probably do the work. At least, his fair share. Therese says he’s reliable but not trustworthy. Prolly talking about his rating a thousand on the creepscale, though she might just be being paranoid. But with Abdul around, I’m not too scared. Abdul makes a good buffer. Hopefully he gets here early. I got some good goss to tell someone. Or, at least, some possibly interesting goss. I’m not sure how good it is, but I haven’t heard it anywhere else yet so it’s def something. And, unlike Therese or Ruth, he likes to gossip with me.

I sit down at a desk and pull out my notes for the project. Sometimes, group work can be irritating. I forget, not everyone has been to the school of Therese, where showing up anywhere less than five minutes early is showing up extremely late. Flipping the notes open to the project possibilities I scribbled down during class. As I pull out my laptop, I begin to wonder how long before Abdul or Herman shows up. As though on cue, Abdul walks in the moment that I begin to think he’s going to be late.

He looks at me, somewhat confused, as he walks in. Walking over to me, he adds, “Oh, you’re already here. Of course you’re already here. I see Ter’s successfully brainwashed you.”

“Therese,” I correct him. That’s one of them easy things people really shouldn’t, and don’t want to, get wrong. “And no, I just know that early is better than late.”

Abdul rolls his eyes as he sits down at a desk next to mine. “So, you want to start figuring this all out?” he asks.

“Nah, we should wait for Herman. Besides, I’ve got some gossip I’ve been dying to tell someone,” I answer him.

“Oh, well, yeah. Screw a load of this, spill,” Abdul says with a smile. Now this is the kind of reaction that makes me like the guy.

I begin with a question, to gauge reaction. “Remember that Ike stuff from last year?”

From the look in his eyes, he does. He confirms it with a question of his own. “You mean the whole intimately encountering some important person thing? I might.”

I smile at that and cock my head. “I’m pretty sure it’s still going on.”

He raises an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?” he asks.

I explain as quickly as possible. “See, I was talking with Alberto for, well that’s not important. The convo wanders and he says he’s only heard Ike’s alarm go off seven times in the last month. And, I mean, it’s Ike. No way he doesn’t have his alarm going every day.”

Abdul furrows his brow. “That sounds serious, you think anyone knows more info?”

“Don’t know,” I say honestly to begin with, then, to avoid the question, I half-joke, “I’d talk to Jase about it next time he’s high, but the Smoking Trail is gross.” You can feel the degeneracy people get up to on the Trail, just walking down it. I avoid it as much as possible. Even go so far as heading through town to get to the strip mall, assuming there isn’t much urgency to the trip.

Abdul gives me a look somewhere between judgment and lack of finding the half-joke funny. “You know that isn’t who I’m talking about.”

I sigh. “Well, according to Greg, she knows all.” thinking about it a bit, I add, “But she didn’t tell us before, so it must be one of them sworn secrets, though.” Then, I brush it off entirely. “Besides, she’s been spending most of her free time stalking our advisor, I doubt she knows much more now than before.”

This has him start going off. “At least you know where she’s disappearing to,” he mutters grumpily. Seeing my confusion, he explains, “Greg still refuses to tell me where he vanishes to for hours at a time.”

“Oh,” I explain, “She didn’t tell me. I just went and found the answer.”

He looks at me. “Ter letting you figure out what she’s doing is basically telling you. I’ve always assumed that’s part of her standard communication system.”

“Shut up,” I spit out. Taking a breath to push that out of my head, I go back to Greg. “Maybe it’s, um, Katie, right?”

Abdul bites his lip in thought. “Yeah, I mean, sometimes, probably-” he begins.

He doesn’t get a chance to finish, because Herman walks in. “What the heck,” he says, “Y’all’re already here?” He checks his watch then shakes his head. “But I’m not even late. I’m early.”

I check the clock on the wall. Technically, he’s right. We agreed to meet at quarter past seven, and it’s about thirty seconds before 7:15. “I mean, technically,” I admit, “We just got here early to chat.”

“Speak for yourself,” Abdul says, “I got here early to make sure I couldn’t be ridiculed for being late.”

“I would never,” I insist. I’m lying.

“You literally did it when I showed up eight seconds late for our study session on Sunday,” he insists. He’s right, partly.

I shake my head. “Every time you say it, you seem to be showing up earlier and earlier. I expect next time you’ll claim to have been a minute early.”

Abdul shakes his head. “I apologize for Irene,” he says, “She never learned good manners. Come, sit, we can start when you’re ready.”

“Right. For what it’s worth, I suspect she wouldn’t’ve done gone hard at you if you was actually early. I mean, looks at this. I was barely early and she didn’t make fun of me none at all.” Herman feels the need to but in on the Irene and Abdul comedy routine. Because of course he does. Some people.

“See,” I say, “Herman understands. I’m nothing if not fair in ridicule.”

Abdul rolls his eyes. “Sure, and I’m a good student.”

At this point, Herman finishes pulling out his own notebook. “So, planning meeting time, right?” he says, trying to get us back on track.

“Right,” I reply, “So I figure we should come up with a topic today, find a bunch of research stuff, get the documents and whatnot, over the next couple days, then meet up this weekend to determine our thesis and what we’re each gonna contribute.”

“Seems fair,” Abdul says, “I’m free Sunday morning around ten. That work for you guys?”

“Naw, I got church then. How abouts two?” Herman offers up the time.

“Two works for me, I suppose,” Abdul says. He looks at me.

I shrug. “Sure, two it is then. That brings us to figuring out our topic, right?”

“I suppose that’s about right,” Herman says, “You got any ideas?”

I shrug, nod, and say, “I might have a couple, what about you two?”

Abdul chuckles without making the chuckling noise, a breathy heaving smile. “That’s a nope from me. I was a bit preoccupied.”

“Of course you were,” I say with a wry smile crawling onto my face. “What about you, Herman, were you otherwise occupied as well?”

“That seems like a question about facts, so why do I get the distinct feeling there’s a right and wrong answer that’s got nothings to do with what actually went down,” Herman ponders.

“Whether or not there is, best answer with what actually went down. Worse to be caught in a lie about your answer than answer something wrong,” Abdul helps Herman out a bit.

Herman smiles and shrugs, “Don’t matter one way or the other. My auntie always taught me that telling the truth is always best. Besides, I’m thinking the right answer and my answer is the same answer.”

“What answer would that be?” I muse aloud with a smile. As much as I like a little back and forth, this has been a lot of words to say nothing at all.

“I did have one interesting topic idea,” he says.

“Good enough, I suppose. What was it? And please don’t say one of them example topics she gave us,” I reply.

He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Irene. Naw, it’s actually combining the next chapter with some stuff we learnt in one hundred.”

“And, what’s that?” Abdul presses. He clearly has somewhere he’d rather be right now, but I know better than to ask. Maybe he’s got a date, or maybe he wants to stalk Greg and figure out where he’s hiding. Either way, it isn’t my business.

“Well, I was thinking, we’s going to be looking into international communities and their relations to national systems and the like, but what’s about their relations to intranational communities and systems? Like hows religion affects certain segments of certain areas one ways, and other areas and other segments different ways? Then take that logic and we try ‘n’ apply it to the whole Magisterium.”

“That’s actually a pretty solid idea,” I admit, flipping the page in my notebook and starting to jot down some information on the fresh sheet of paper. “And we could bring in studies on the establishment of Villae.”

“Ooh,” Abdul adds, “And France.”

I chuckle at that. On the one hand, he’s definitely right, we need to address certain aspects and interplays in French society in this paper if we want it to be at all thorough. On the other hand, how he put it sounds straight up ridiculous. Like the worst of bad jokes.

“That’s about right,” Herman adds, “Sos that’s the plan? We’re going with my idea, not even looking at Irene’s? I mean I saw that last page, you had ‘bout three scrawled down.”

“She said she did, so she definitely did. But she also said that yours was better,” Abdul replies, “So you’ll never convince her that any of hers could possibly be good enough to challenge this idea.”

“Shut up, Abdul,” I spit out. Then, much more calm, I add, “But yeah, your idea is a solid A paper with plenty of room to be expanded upon. Mine were all kinda trite or short. So, we go with yours. Do you want to set up a shared doc for all our sources, or do you think we should find them independently and risk sharing some?”

“I say we risk it, each find, say, seven of the twenty required, and if we share sources, we can find more for our actual sections.”

Herman nods along as Abdul offers his opinion. “I’m with Abdul, I don’t wants any of our angles of attack t’ influence anyone else’s ideas for the directions of researching.”

“Fair enough,” I say, “Though I think we should only look for five to six sources before we have a thesis and sections, so we have to find sources specific to our sections. Might be that way we end up finding a whole score of better, specific sources once we get to that point.”

“Fine,” Abdul says, “So we each find five sources by Sunday, meet up at two. This building’s gonna be locked, where should we meet?”

Herman posits his idea, “Why not just the commons in Admin building? It’s gots the chairs, the tables, and the space. And it’s open at two on a Sunday.”

“That it is,” I reply, “I’ve got no problem with meeting in the Admin commons. You?” I look over at Abdul. He simply shrugs, which I take to mean he, too, has no problem. I smile. “Admin commons at two it is. Don’t be late.”

Abdul leans over towards Herman and whispers, intentionally loud enough for me to hear, “You definitely don’t want to be late. Remember, I showed up four seconds late on Sunday to a study session and she didn’t lay off me for days.”

Herman looks at him as he gathers his stuff. “Four seconds it is now?” he asks with a smirk.