Chapter One: Return to Gray Hall

"I gotta go back, back, back to school again.
Whoa, whoa, I gotta go...back to school again!"
-The Four Tops, "Back to School," Grease 2 Soundtrack

Jake Lau parked his car in the Burton Union parking lot, the closest student parking lot by Gray Hall, the home of Davis Law School. Despite it being 7:20 AM, a quarter of the parking spots were already filled. On most days, once it was past 9:30 AM, it was nearly impossible to find an open spot anywhere on campus, unless one was a member of the faculty or staff. The Davis University Parking Department always oversold student parking permits. They would try to find a parking violation so they could write a $20 parking ticket. Most of these tickets involved students parking in the wrong colored zone. Half of the signs signifying which zone was what were poorly designed. One could never tell where one zone started and where one zone ended. Jake won many Traffic Court cases with this defense. Even the Parking Department admitted they were confusing. But they never did anything to change the signs.
Jake lugged out his backpack and his laptop bag out of the car. Normally, he would also be carrying an armload of casebooks, but he only had two classes today. It was the first day of school. All the books fit inside his backpack. He locked the car doors and started walking across Hilltop Road to get to Gray Hall.
Jake stopped at the corner and carefully looked both ways. University students were notoriously bad drivers, especially while driving on campus. For some reason, they ignored stop signs and considered crosswalks to be a convenient reference when targeting pedestrians in the game of Pedestrian Hunting. Most students crossing the streets on campus weren't any better. They wouldn't cross at crosswalks but randomly crossed anywhere, darting out into the street behind parked cars. Luckily, a car had hit no one, yet.
Although it wasn't even 7:30, it was in the eighties. With the humidity, it became oppressive. A bead of sweat trickled down his face and into his eyes. He increased his pace to the law school. Supposedly, the renovations made during the summer were over. He hoped the law school administration budgeted some money to fix the heating and cooling system at Gray Hall. The running joke among the students at Gray Hall was that the temperature reflected the change in the law school's ranking. Last year, they were in the sixties. This year, it was in the upper nineties and pushing close to the triple digits.
Jake passed by another law school student while walking towards Gray Hall. It was Melissa Trent, carrying her black leather laptop case. Jake first met her at the Davis Law Talent Show last year. He "volunteered" to be a performer. To be honest, he didn't volunteer out of free will. A girl in his small section--Sarah Carpenter-- was the head of the talent show committee and she needed one more performer. Since he mentioned to Sarah that he could do impressions, she persuaded him to sign up. By persuasion, Sarah repeatedly told him "If you don't sign up, I'll keep on bothering you" over and over again until she got her way. Women, thought Jake, were too good at the art of persuasion and he never would win. Jake was a hit at the talent show, although the judges didn't agree with the audience. He became a celebrity at Davis Law School because of that performance. After his performance, he met Melissa. To be honest, he was glad that Sarah bothered him. If it weren't for her, Jake would have never met Melissa and they would have never become friends. It was ironic how things worked out in life.
He opened the door and felt the blast of warm air hit his face. The law school didn't fix the heating and cooling system during the summer. It was just as warm inside the law school as it was outside. The new school year was not starting out that well. While Jake held the door open, Melissa arrived at the door.
"Jake!" said Melissa excitedly. "I haven't seen you on IM lately. I was so disappointed." She said the last sentence with a pout on her lips.
"Hi, Melissa! Oh, about not being on IM. I was on vacation," explained Jake.
"Oh...I see. And you didn't tell me. I thought you abandoned me."
Jake noted she was pouting, but she had a mischievous glint in her eye. Melissa was playing with him. She was a natural at flirting and getting the attention of men. Then again, Jake could hardly tell what emotion she was really feeling at any time. He decided to play along.
"Melissa, you know I would never abandon you. Then again, who would abandon you, given that?" He paused for a moment and then he added, "And besides, if I IMed you everyday, your boyfriend might get jealous."
Melissa laughed. She said, "Jake, Jake, Jake. How can you still be single?"
"I don't know. I must be too much to handle." Jake noticed he was holding the door open. He said, "Ladies first."Melissa walked in and said, "Thank you. Such a gentleman."
**********
Jake followed her into Gray Hall. He felt the hot, humid air envelop him as he walked in. Some things never change. Wires hung from the ceiling like vines. Construction workers were scrambling around the informal commons. They were busy laying down floor tiles, installing in lights, and putting in the last wall panels. Despite all the workers scurrying around, he didn't notice any heating and cooling people inside Gray Hall.
He got a copy of the New York Times, USA Today, and the local papers. After putting the local papers and the USA Today in his backpack, he opened the doors to Room 100, the main lecture hall at Gray Hall.Jake turned left and walked down the side aisle. He opened the exit and looked outside. He saw a Halon van outside; this was a sure sign that the heating/cooling system at Gray Hall would be fixed. They were the only industrial HVAC company in town. He wondered why the law school didn't get the problem fixed earlier. He then remembered that the law school claimed "issues in state educational funding" as an excuse for everything that went wrong or didn't get fixed in a timely manner. He was cynical about this excuse. The law school could afford to buy brand new leather furniture costing God knows what, but they couldn't find money to fix the air conditioning. Personally, he could care less about brand new furniture if it was miserably hot while you were sitting in them.
Jake chose a seat in the back of the room. If you sat in the first three rows of the room, you couldn't see the dry-erase board and the projector screen very well. There was also the problem of glare from the shiny dry-erase board. Sitting in the middle rows wasn't any better. The architects didn't take lines of sight into account when designing the room. You could see the projection screen, you could see the heads in front of you, but you couldn't see the bottom-half of the dry-erase board. Professors always put the most important material on the bottom-half of the dry-erase board. The back rows--the last two rows of the room-- had the best view of both the board and the projector screen. Professors always ask the hardest questions to those foolish enough to sit in the front. Jake learned these lessons last year during his first year of law school.
**********
He read the National News section of the New York Times. Jake believed there was a hierarchy of newspapers and the pinnacle was the New York Times as it actually reported the news. USA Today told the news, but added in a whole bunch of color pictures. Local papers told local news and national news, but the national news stories came from the Associated Press or from larger papers like the New York Times. He hardly read the Davis University Daily, as it was a "What News?" paper. National news was several days old and pulled from the Associated Press. News about Davis University, he could get it from the local papers. The paper consisted mostly of ads and drink specials.
After reading the national news, Jake proceeded to the Arts Section, home of one of the best crossword puzzles in the nation. The New York Times crossword puzzle, edited by Will Shortz, was his morning diversion before classes. The weekend Times puzzle and the Friday puzzle in The Wall Street Journal were excellent and he couldn't decide which was better. However, he discovered English cryptic crosswords and became hooked. Now those were crossword puzzles. Jake found the crossword puzzle and solved most of the clues in ten minutes. The rest of the clues proved to be tougher to solve. He became engrossed with solving the rest of the clues that he didn't notice the person standing behind him.
Jake felt a hand on his back. He turned around and saw it was Joe Shaffer, the undisputed King of Hypotheticals. Joe gained a reputation for interrupting every class with convoluted hypothetical questions that drove some professors insane. This habit sometimes, well, most of the times, became annoying. There was a benefit coming from these mind-bending questions. While the professor was dissecting the question into more manageable sections, students would zone out and write e-mail, play computer games, send AOL Instant Messages and check their Facebook profiles. There probably was something insightful in the answer, but most students didn't care. Actually listening to these "enlightening" explanations took too much time, too much attention, and too many brain cells that could be spent playing Solitaire.
Once you got past Joe's tendency for intellectual pomposity and his love of hypotheticals and philosophical arguments, he was a cool guy. Note the big list of qualifiers. You had to get through all of that stuff to get to like him. Jake had steadily built a tolerance level to such academic pretentiousness, but even he found himself getting annoyed on certain occasions. Even Joe's best friends found him annoying.
"Jake, I stand here in complete awe," said Joe. "I'm not one to admit this often, but I've found an intellectual superior and you are it."
"I'd like to know your reasoning behind that statement," said Jake.
"Well Jake, it's quite simple," said Joe. He paused for a moment and he continued. "You went into finals without making a single outline and you got great grades in all your classes. I could never do what you did. And you manage to find time to demolish crossword puzzles."
"I'm surprised of also. I thought that the apathy I have for law school would catch up and screw me, but it hasn't yet. I might be lucky."
"I wish I had your luck. Well, time to read the assignment for today."
Jake glanced at his watch and noted the time. He said, "It's only 8:03 right now. You still have a half hour."
"That is true. I just haven't read anything. Well, I'll leave you with your crossword puzzle."
**********
Jake went back to solving the last three clues that were unsolved. He was stuck on 31-Down, a seven letter clue. It was the condition where you have the word on the tip of your tongue, but just couldn't remember it. "Aphasia, yes, that's it," murmured Jake as he filled in 31-Down.
The last two clues solved themselves and he quickly filled in the remaining blank squares. He stopped the stopwatch timer and noted he spent twelve minutes solving this puzzle. He estimated his conversation lasted a minute so it really took him eleven minutes to solve the crossword. He was slower than normal. A Thursday crossword should have only taken about ten.
Jake had some time left until class started. He took out his laptop and plugged in the power cord into the outlet. The outlet was burned out; the same outlet that was broke last year. Another repair the law school never got around to fixing during the summer. He tried the next one and his laptop turned on. Jake typed in his password and double clicked on the Firefox icon. He typed in his username and network password to get on the law school's wireless network. Great. The network was down.
His first class of the day, Evidence, was uneventful. The Professor teaching the class, Professor Pearson, was informal and told everyone to call him "Dan" or "Pearson" and not "Professor Pearson" if you wanted to get out of class alive or with a passing grade. Pearson also forgot to mention mentally unbalanced. Most people who met him had the tendency to call him "Custodian." Jake saw the professor's attire for the day--faded blue jeans and a garish Hawaiian shirt--and his male pattern baldness and found "Custodian" an apt title for Pearson. He imagined Pearson with Rayban sunglasses and a straw hat; Pearson made for a convincing Jimmy Buffet fan--one of the legion of Parrotheads. Either that or an ex-beach bum. During class, the law school wireless network finally was working, but barely. The class went faster than the Internet connection.
..........What new and exciting events will happen to the main character? Stay tuned for the second installment of Chapter One: Return to Gray Hall.