Senioritis 3

Anything About Anything

"What did it say on slide six?" Gwen whispered harshly, peering over Peter's shoulder to see his notes.

She had an iPad and was writing in perfect cursive letters with clearly annotated diagrams. Peter had a simple notebook and half used pen.

"We just row reduced this three by three matrix in five steps." Peter whispered back, moving his notebook closer to her so she could look at it anyway.

"Thanks." Gwen replied quietly. "This class is so hard already."

Peter wasn't finding the Linear Algebra content that hard so far, but he didn't want to tell Gwen. It was 8:05 a.m. on a Wednesday - the third day of class. Barely anyone had shown up to Evans Hall for lecture, but Peter was eager not to fall behind. He'd texted Gwen the night before after he found out they were in the same class, and then she'd felt obliged to meet him for a quick breakfast before walking to class with him.

Gwen sighed again now, rubbing her eye. He could tell she wasn't a morning person. She wore an oversized New York Yankees t-shirt that made it look like she wasn't wearing any shorts, and sandals to reveal her light pink painted toes. Her hair was scraped into a messy low ponytail and she wore thin black glasses because she was short-sighted.

They sat together on a free row near the back of the lecture room which was freezing, by the way. Peter made a note to himself to bring a sweater for next time. About fifty other students dotted the hall that would have fit about two hundred people.

Their lecturer was a short, old Spanish man who spoke in a thick accent, pacing up and down beneath the projector with his arms behind his back. Gwen had already asked Peter to repeat something he'd said like four times now.

"Does anyone know how I will get this matrix into row reduced echelon form?" Dr. Vazquez, their lecturer asked. He pointed at the projector and his eyes scanned the room.

No one said anything for a good five seconds. A girl
was blatantly on her phone, texting. Others were still half asleep.

Peter inhaled sharply before raising up his hand.

"Yes - you." Dr. Vazquez said, pointing at Peter.

"Uh...me?" Peter started. "Um - yeah, I was just gonna say you could subtract row two from row one then...do row three minus two multiplied by row one."

Dr. Vazquez paused for a second, scribbling something down in his own notes.

"Yes, excellent." he said, moving on to the next slide. "Your name?"

"Uh, Peter...sir." Peter said.

"Thank you, Peter." Dr. Vazquez said. "Now before the class ends...I will talk about eigenspaces and why they are important in linear algebra..."

Peter felt Gwen nudge him.

"Smarty pants." She whispered, smiling quickly at him.

"Hardly." Peter replied, but he was super proud of himself for answering that question at the first lecture. Maybe now, he'd be in his professor's good books.

Peter liked Gwen. In fact, he'd felt like he'd already known her all his life. She always knew what to say to make him laugh, and she never really stressed out about anything. She was also touchy-feely, but not in a weird way. She leaned over Peter's shoulder again now, her arm on top of his as she traced what he'd written with her finger and wrote it down on her iPad.