Christian Fletcher was a morning person.  The early hours of sunlight caffeinated his veins and clarified his faculties.  The activity of the day was slowly gaining momentum and the collisions that were common among the late-minded were yet to be seen.  It was a time when he could take walks through the campus and solitarily admire the mass of a building, the scent of a garden or the legibility of a path.  On certain occasions, when he was truly the first person on campus, aside from the security guards, he would walk backwards down the very same paths that everyone would occupying as the hour approached the first classes of the day.  As a student of civil engineering, he was particularly interested in the bidirectionality of its walking paths.  During these moments he often considered the possibility that a satellite high up in the exosphere was recording his ambulatory movements along with those of the other students on the Texas Tech campus and that some human traffic expert was compiling a heat map for scientific analysis.  The map would most likely reveal gradients of red, orange and yellow clouds spanning similar areas of interest on the campus.  He could be found in the engineering cloud.  As he made his way down Boston Ave the clouds would change in color from yellow to green to blue, the cold lifeless void of the map where no one would be found.  The hues would brighten as he grew closer to the Communications, Math and Science buildings.  The pattern would continue in this manner as he passed through the clouds of Chemistry, Agriculture, Food Technology, Landscape Architecture and Plant Sciences until arriving at English and Philosophy.  The distant sounds of shoes shuffling across the asphalt, the ring of a cell phone or the laughter from a group on their way to class brought him back down to Earth.  It was the last day of class for the Spring semester and Christian thought it was particularly auspicious that final exams would begin on Friday along with the Cinco de Mayo celebrations.  The battle between the student and the teacher over the gilded throne of the “A”, the soft cushiony La-Z-Boy “B”, the “C” sectional, the measly bar stool of a “D” and the gutter of the “F” would be fought down to the very last line of the Blue Book.  He joined the ranks of his fellow freshman as they entered the building.  Before he could reach for the handle of the door, a Spanish study group clearly hopped up on energy drinks and doughnuts burst out of the double doors, their leader chanting with vigor, “the hellbent and ill-equipped Mexicans will defeat the elitist French faculty and never allow foreign invasion in the Americas again.  Then, once the smoke clears, we will celebrate and beber muchacerveza, cantar con los mariachis ybailar una polca o un Tejano.”

You’re only a freshman here and barely that.   the only true clarity the calm hours before the was wandering along the West side of Boston Ave Texas Tech campus was finishing up his first year at Texas Tech and he couldn't fathom the idea of going back to Lamesa for the summer.  He decided to talk to his advisor in the Civil Engineering department and see if she could help.  

     "How are your grades?  Are you passing all your courses?"

     "Yes.  That's not the problem."

     "Oh.  Then are you registered for the fall?"

     "Yes.  Actually, I was hoping you could help me decide what to do this summer."

     "So you want to go to summer school?"

     "Yes, but not here.  I mean I plan to be here another three years and I don't want to spend my summer's here.  Does that make sense?  I love the school and all."

     "How can I help you if you don't want to be here?"

     "Well I was hoping you could recommend a school to attend?"

     "You know you don't want to be here, but aren't sure where you want to go?"

     "Yes.  That's right."

     "Are you sure you're passing all your classes?"

     "Yes," I laughed nervously.