Chapter 1 Basic Physics
It's 3:00 p.m. Thursday It's time for me to head out to my physics class on campus. I live with my grandparents to go to college, but they live out in the country it takes me nearly an hour to get to school everyday. It's my first physics class of the year and I go into the large lecture hall and find a seat. I found a space that had fewer people, I didn't really want to sit near anyone. I was only 5 minutes early, and people were still filing in.
I can't stand it when people show up late to class. Have some respect for yourselves, for your professor, and for your peers. The lecture starts up, the professors talking about his syllabus something simple and easy. I'm not really paying that much attention.
We had been in the lecture hall nearly 20 minutes when the cutest guy walked through the doors of the hall. I wouldn't have noticed had the doors not slammed shut upon his arrival though. I rolled my eyes thinking to myself "What a slacker showing up late on the first day." Of course what does this slacker do but sit right next to me.
There had to still be 20 plus seats in the lecture hall but he just had to choose the one next to mine of course. His existence in and of itself was starting to get on my nerves when he turned to me and asked "What are we doing?"
"Listening to him talk about the syllabus" I replied, nodding my head toward the professor.
"Where do I find it?"
"He said it was online dude" I said rolling my eyes thinking to myself "If you were here you would have known."
The rest of class went by uneventfully with the professor talking about some crazy things in physics. I might be prompt on time ready to go, but I'm not a math person and this was a lot of math. Just a tad bit of fear struck meas I realized I need an A to keep my 4.0 GPA. Already my brain was spinning around tutoring options. I didn't know anyone this class yet, and the general tutoring center for the school was closed because of covid. Oh well I guess I'll deal with it when the time comes.
It's 3:00 on Tuesday and I'm headed to my physics class again. I plopped down in the same seat that I did last week, I'm a bit of a creature of habit. Cutie McLate pants the same guy as last week and ended up sitting down next to me again. Thankfully this time much less late.
The professor started it up talking about something called free fall. I understood the concept ,but the math was totally foreign to me especially in word problem format.
"Shit" I said to myself quietly. I had meant for that to stay in my head, but it snuck out in my frustration.
"Hmm?" Cutie McLate pants seemed to have dozed off, but of course my tiny cuss ended up waking him up.
"Nothing this problem is just weird" I responded, hoping he would go back to sleep.
He peaked over at my textbook and looked at it. He clearly hadn't been following along, so I assumed he was just trying to catch up.
He quickly looked up at me puzzled.
"Doesn't your professor want you to round earth gravity to 9.8?"
I looked down and I noticed I forgot to put the decimal in. I felt like an idiot. What a simple mistake that I just slipped on.
I closed my eyes tight feeling embarrassed. I just judged the crap out of this kid, who was clearly listening in the whole time, likely better than I was.
"Thank you" I said earnestly.
"No problem, I'm John by the way"
"Taylor" I replied, in a short but sweet way. If he is as smart as he acts, he might make a good tutor. I also wanted to end the conversation before the professor went over too much more new material. I refocused.
As class was ending I looked over at him. For the first time I really looked at him. John was not only a cutie, but I daresay he was hot. Like Carolina Reaper hot. He was crazy tall, probably 6'5 at least, he had super dark brown hair that looked almost black. Those eyes, crystal clear blue.
He smiled at me, his teeth were bright white, so white they almost looked fake.
"Hey," I said, breaking out of my little trance, "Would you be able to study with me after class? You seem to really know what's going on without even trying."
"Yeah sure" he responded. "My high school just had a really good physics teacher, so most of this is review for me."
