By Sam Morgan
Chapel Hill - After a grueling first semester at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Freshman Morehead scholar William Bradford Livingston made his first B.
“I’m in shock. I never thought this could happen to me,” said Mr. Livingston, while sobbing in his immaculately furnished North Campus dorm.
“I’m going to be the laughingstock of Harvard Medical School’s application committee. I don’t know if I’ll even be able to show my face in Boston after they see my transcript.
“I feel like I have let so many people down. Over the summer, when I was hiking in the Himalayas, I made a promise to an old sherpa dying of lymphoma that I would discover the cure for cancer for him, and now there’s no way I’ll be able to follow through on that.
“And when I adopted a young Vietnamese boy with a nasty case of eye worms, I promised to develop the microbiological laser technology needed to neutralize the parasites and restore his vision, but now this is surely a lost cause as well. I can’t even imagine how disappointed he must be.”
When reached for comment, the young Vietnamese boy said, “That kid was crazy thinking he could cure me. I have eye worms for Chrissake! Eye worms! You ever heard of eye worms? Me neither! I’m the only person in the world ever got eye worms. And I ain’t sittin’ under a microscope and lettin’ somebody poke my eyeballs with a syringe until they figure out what the hell an eye worm is. Fuck that. Plus, I really don’t mind them that much. They give me something to talk about. Not a bad icebreaker, actually.”
The boy then turned to a group of young women and yelled, “Hey, check it out! I got worms in my eyeballs!”
Although many would consider a B in Math 563 (Imaginary Numbers in Multi-Variable Dimensions) to be a mild setback, if not a perfectly admirable grade, William Bradford is disconsolate.
“I used to always think about how my great-great-grandfather had to struggle during his life, how he had only thirty five cents to his name during the 1860’s but managed to support eight kids and pull his family out of poverty by working seventy-four hour shifts at the steel mill, making three cents an hour. That used to get me through any tough time I had to face. It certainly helped me out when I was rescuing those three people from their burning house, but thinking about Industrial Revolution-era steel mills can’t even coax a hopeful, nostalgic ‘go-get-’em’ out of me today.”
He added, “I thought I had enough time to study for this class, but apparently I didn’t. I mean in high school I was in a lot of clubs so I knew I could handle being a fanatic in the Carolina Fever, being a tenor in the Clef Hangers, being a representative in Student Congress, and writing for the DTH, but I guess petitioning to overload on academic hours in order to squeeze this calculus class into my schedule was taking it a bit too far. Stupid, William, stupid!”
Mr. Livingston, who has also received well over a hundred thousand dollars in other merit-based scholarships, could not even find solace in his extracurricular activities.
“I thought if I taught a few Durham inter-city students how to read, that would cheer me up, but no. Nothing is working. I am a miserable failure. I can’t even concentrate on theorizing a unifying equation for the universe.”
However, William is determined to get through this. He’s already begun focusing on his campaign for student body president in the hopes that such a demanding leadership position will overshadow his academic shortcomings. “I figure this might not be such a bad thing in terms of my campaign,” he said. “A slightly tarnished record appeals to voters. Bill Clinton had his history with marijuana. George W. Bush had his with cocaine and drunk driving. Allred had his with infanticide. Let’s just hope this B isn’t too much for the voters to stomach.”