Congratulations on Your Successful Poster Presentation!

Forty five minutes before it’s due the ink will still be drying. You’ll be running down the hall, your hair flying every which-a-way, your pulse pounding. You’ll deck a kid with a diorama as you run past him, just to show him what’s what. And then you’ll arrive at your classroom, drenched in sweat, only to find it empty.

This will give you some much needed time to prepare. You’ll arrange all of the desks into the shape of what you call “Fort Awesome,” smoke a bowl and put on some deodorant before you take your seat near the head of the class to present, when the time comes, your findings on the interplay of various complex proteins during the reproductive process of fruit flies.

You’ll have a good thirty minutes to cool down and let the weed take hold. Thirty minutes you’ll spend whiting out portions of your poster and hastily re-writing them in pencil instead of relaxing and collecting your thoughts. But when the time comes and your fellow graduate students and teachers file into the room and take their seats, you’ll know that you’re ready.

The presentation will begin with the students slapping their feet against the ground rhythmically, pounding out the beat of “We Will Rock You” by Queen. It’ll rise and rise into cacophony until it nearly deafens you. Then the professor will stand with his arms raised and shout:

“BEGIN!”

You’ll leap atop his desk, pointer in hand, and begin shouting out random facts from the poster while pointing to various locations.

“Ribosome inhibition occurs along this genome!” you’ll shout at the class. They’ll respond with a series of oohs and ahhs, accented by a mass, collective eyeroll.

“Fruit flies aren’t actually flies!” you’ll scream, flicking a pencil off your professor’s desk and catching one of the douchiest students in the classroom right in the eye, sending him writhing to the ground in pain. The classroom will erupt in applause.

Your professor will stand up and place a check mark on the blackboard, next to your poster. You’ll smile at him and then open your mouth before blacking out.

When you come to the class will be carrying you on their shoulders. Your poster will be in tatters on the floor and the professor will be stripped to the waist, pounding his chest. The blackboard will be covered in check marks.

Congratulations on Your Successful Poster Presentation!

Congratulations on Getting Rid of Your Poster!

“FUCK YOU!”

She’ll storm out of your dorm room still wearing your shirt and underwear, walking barefoot through the snow to her dorm. You’ll want to scream at her that she’s overreacting, that she should at least put her shoes on. That she has warm winter clothing and that she’ll likely catch cold the way she’s strutting about. But you won’t be able to find the courage to utter a word.

Instead you’ll watch her as she goes, watch the motion of her ass in your underwear. You’ll both be too young to think that this will last, too foolish to realize that sometimes never means forever. You’ll be particularly unconcerned with the thought that she’ll never be back. Women frequently leave your bed in rage and come back several days later, since you have a thing for emotionally damaged angry women who flip out at you.

What will be wearing on you will be the fact that, as she walks across the quad she’ll be clutching the lion’s share of your poster of two girls kissing. You know the one, the one that every single douchebag in college has posted above their bed. She’ll be ripping it up as she goes, knowing that this is going to hurt you, knowing it’ll make you angry the next time you’re together even if you’re inside her.

She won’t turn back to see you looking out after her through your rapidly fogging window. She won’t have to turn to know you’re there, seething, pressing your tongue against your teeth, wishing you could open your window, shout the price of the poster (fourteen dollars and seventy five cents American) and then slam it shut. But you know if you do that then she’ll really be gone. This is her way of winning, her way of taking away your control. You won’t even know she’s doing it.

But she will. And you won’t see it, but she’ll have a tiny smile on her face as she rips the two kissing women in twain, letting the scraps fall to the ground, stumbling a little as her feet go numb.

Congratulations on Getting Rid of Your Poster!