Finding My Way: Season I, Episode 1

Finding My Way is a new weekly installment of The Light Stuff. Set in Washington, D.C. and the adjacent suburbs of Maryland, the fictional storyline follows the exploits of 20-year old college student, Arden Wraps, as he juggles the demands of a new internship at a tech startup with his educational obligations at The University of Maryland.

Nervous? You bet I'm nervous. I've been nervous since the day I was born. The guys at my dorm constantly give me grief over it, saying I take things way too seriously, and that I should spend more time with a beer in one hand and a co-ed in the other. One of them actually said that I give off the scent of dweeb so why bother. Can you believe that? The scent of dweeb.

What do I care? They don't know me. They're a bunch of losers anyway, most of them. Well, not Bitz. He's actually a decent sort. Bitz doesn't try to get one over on me all the time like those losers. He's different. An excellent rommate, really. I couldn't get over how nice he was this morning. I would have thought after my alarm accidentally went off at 5:00 instead of 7:00 a.m. that the clock would have been toast. But not with good old Bitz. He just threw a shoe at me, rolled over, and went right back sleep. Could have been a real moron about the whole thing, really and then where would I be? Certainly not on the redline headed downtown.

Ahh, the first day of my new internship. I'm petrified. I mean, I beat out thirty-five other contenders for this spot, thirty frigg'n five! That's some chicken salad. The truth is, I would have paid them for this spot. I still can't believe Nobler Fineson picked me, inconsequential small time nothing, Arden Wraps, to join their tech startup. This is really going to be a good summer. I can already feel it in my bones.

Still, what if I walk in there and they made a mistake? What if they didn't mean to call me for the position and meant to call someone else? Maybe their receptionist mixed up my name with someone else and it's actually that other person who got the job. What then? I'm no tech guru. I'm just a nobody kid from Ellicott City who fiddled around with funny gadgets and found a hobby. What do I really know about tech?

Oh wow, look at that headline. If this subway car wasn't packed like sardines, I'd have no view at all over that lady's shoulder. Hold still now, will ya lady, stop swaying back and forth. A good distraction might be exactly what the doctor ordered. Lord knows, I need something to take my mind off the growing pools of sweat under my arms. That's right. A little more steady, a little less sway.

Blackboard? Blackboard is now part of Facebook? Nah, that can't be. Does the headline really say they synced? What a dumb idea. Who's going to want personal information from Blackboard transmitted to a place where Facebook can ogle it? Nobody, that's who. I don't care what Blackboard says about keeping information in their own platform, that's gotta be a legitimate worry for anyone.

Scratch that. I forgot about losers. Losers like those guys at the dorm. Losers who are too dumb to care whether hackers tear into the system and start changing grades. Come to think of it, losers are the only ones with real incentive to hack into the program and change grades, so they won't mind. They've got to graduate somehow, now don't they?

God, I wish we were at DuPont Circle already. The guy next to me has been shoving up the wrong parts of me for the past half hour. Back off, buddy. I mean it. I may be nervous, but I'm no dweeb.

To be continued...