BY FENNO
Fenno was minding her own business when – HOLY S*** – she felt herself falling and falling and falling and – BAM! – she finally hit the bottom. She looked around? Where was she? She felt the walls around her, brown and sticky, and – OH NO! – it suddenly hit her. She had fallen into the manure-filled ditch where the ice rink used to be. How can Fenno have been so dung – er, dumb – as to not look where she was going. She recalled the traumatic incident two years earlier when she found herself trapped inside a canvas tent on Jarvis Field with no way out. Now, once again, Fenno had succumbed to one of the law school’s hidden dangers: unannounced construction. Fenno climbed out of the ditch, careful not to ruin the dress she was planning on wearing to the Vie Society’s Society Ball and Cotillion later that evening, but before she could take even one breath of the clean, crisp, spring New England air, she felt a jolt, opened her eyes, and realized it had all been a dream. The heaping pile of manure was not in fact manure at all, but the personification of Fenno’s 3L paper. Ah, yes. The 3L paper. Despite the Registrar’s assurance that even a single sheet of blank paper, merely labeled “3L Paper” at the top, and containing the student’s ID number at the bottom would be sufficient for graduation, Fenno still worried that she would disappoint her advisor, herself, and her newly-purchased friends in the Vie Society. She needed a paper. And how hard could it be to find one? After all, Fenno wasn’t looking for brilliance; a mere potboiler would do. But where to look?
Alas, as Fenno is wont to do, she quickly forgot about her quest to find a 3L paper and moved on to other, more pressing matters. The paper wasn’t due for almost 3 weeks anyway – plenty of time to dash something off about the history of Lexis, or something else suitably worthless. Besides, Fenno needed to get to the Dean of Students office before it closed. She’d received an e-mail before break telling her she’d won a batch of chocolate chip cookies as a reward for filling out the LSC State of the School survey. “Holly Hogan makes great cookies,” Fenno’s friend told her. “I bet they’re fantastic.” Fenno was really excited. She knocked on Dean Cosgrove’s door. “Come in,” said Dean Cosgrove.”
“I got an e-mail telling me I won free cookies,” said Fenno.
“Oh, here they are.”
Dean Cosgrove handed Fenno a plastic container with eight chocolate chip cookies. The container, still sealed, had a sticker on top. These weren’t homemade cookies. They were from Stop-and-Shop. Even worse, the price tag was still on. $2.79. “Is that all I’m worth?” Fenno asked Dean Cosgrove.
“No, Fenno. That’s just all the cookies are worth. Sorry.”
Fenno slinked away, disappointed, hurt, tormented, crushed, saddened, depressed, and slightly itchy. She wandered toward the Hark, bought her ticket for the JLSA Boat Cruise, where she was sure she would meet the love of her life, and went home to start work on her 3L paper. It was going to be a sad few weeks for Fenno. The end of the line. Lucky for her, she was probably going to fail some of her classes, and thus would be stuck here forever.