HAWK

When I applied for Stony Brook University, I did not realize how much the Women in Science and Engineering Program (aka WISE) was so curious as to know whether or not my state of mind had undergone a weekly transformation due to the unnecessary stress that follows a science major. At the end of every week, a bunch of my friends and I would receive a 200-something questions survey which would let the department know if we were danger of heading towards a madhouse asylum or if we finally gave up with our studies and became utterly convinced that 2 plus 2 did equal 5. These surveys are optional by the way. Why fill them out you ask? Well, YOUZ GIT PAID MADD MONEY SON. If you complete all 2,383,745 plus surveys, you get paid. As a poor non-work study college student who goes to a university which only offers jobs to "Work Study" students, this is the only way to make money; this and selling textbooks. Most of the surveys were multiple choice, which was not an issue. The problem was the open ending questions like "Explain any positive or negative experiences you had in the past week". Usually I would answer,"Meh" or "Gah" or some other three lettered nonsense word. I was really upset (and bored for the most part) one day so I decided to answer this question based on a story which truly happened...with a bit of exaggeration:

"I was sitting quietly in my room with my attention fixated upon Na-K ATPase pumps and Nicotinic ACh receptors, when suddenly at the corner of my eye, I noticed a dark blur shoot down from the sky. It was a hawk and between its claws was a strangled pigeon. It laid it on the newly fallen snow and started to tear straight into the sinews. Blood oozed out from its neck and the feathers were splayed around the mass murder scene. I gazed out from the window, both in bewilderment and disgust to see what the hawk would do next to its unfortunate victim. Suddenly, the hawk decided to leave and took along the dead beaten corpse, which was formally the pigeon. I had a test the next day. I failed. So I consider this both a positive and negative experience. Yes, it was negative because I did not do so well on my exam, but I also managed to experience a moment which was Planet Earth worthy. I think David Attenborough would be proud to narrate my story as it is indeed a captivating one."

If I read that, I would pay that student twice as much because they put the effort to write something in that stupid little HTML box.