Page 8 of Mostly My Boss
“I’ll pay for your notes.”
“My notes?”
“Yes. You’re going to sit in class and type everything the professor says, aren’t you? Like, all of it.”
That was my plan. I took keyboarding seriously and the number of words I could type per minute was legit. The faster my fingers worked, the more they kept up with the thoughts coming from my brain. It was how I communicated best.
Straight dictation was nothing for me.
“I’m not sharing my notes with you,” I said, immediately rejecting the idea.
“Why not?”
“Because,” I said, as if that was answer enough. This was Harvard.Harvard.Game on. One of the most intense intellectual competitions in the country. These were the people I was going to be competing with for the top jobs in Manhattan. There was no playing nice with anyone from here until graduation. At least, not academically.
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not your competition,” he said, as if guessing my motives.
“You don’t know that,” I said smugly.
“Yes. I do. I’m a genius. Like, a for-real one. Tested and everything. My point is, I’m not your competition.”
A genius? And he said it just like that. As if it wasn’t the most bizarre way ever to introduce himself. I rolled my eyes at him.
“If you’re a genius, then you don’t need my notes.”
“No, that’s exactly why I need your notes. You see, I learn multiple ways, one of those being auditory. So everything the professor says that I listen to, I’m going to take in. I don’tneednotes for that.”
“Then what?” I wasn’t even sure why I was here still listening to him, except:
a) I didn’t need to be at my next class for another forty minutes.
b) He had my attention with the whole genius comment.
“It’s for when I’m not listening. Which happens. My brain starts to go off on tangents, and because I don’t know where they’re going to lead, I simply follow. When that happens, I lose time. Chunks of it. Classes of it. I considered hiring a note-taker to follow me to class, but I thought it would make me look weird.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“But here you are! In at least three of the same classes I’m taking. And we have the whole seat thing in common.”
I shook my head. “We donothave the whole seat thing in common. You came up with some crazy formula. I sat down. There’s a difference.”
His eyes narrowed like he didn’t believe me and, for a second, I almost conceded that there had been more to my seat selection than random choice, but I stopped myself.
He was the weird guy, which meant I needed to be the normal one in this exchange.
“I’ll pay you a hundred dollars,” he said, rattling off the number like it meant nothing.
A hundred dollars. For notes.
“Per class.”
What? Were my eyes round? Was my jaw open? Shit. I tried to rein it in and play it cool.
“You want to pay me a hundred dollars per class for my notes in case your brain wanders?” I repeated.
Maybe I was wrong after all. Maybe he was just another rich douchebag who thought he could toss around money to solve his problems.
“Look, I’m serious. The brain wandering thing…it happens, and I have to let it because, otherwise, what’s the point of having my brain? I can’t just sit there in class, listening to some professor droning on, while the next great idea could be formulating just out of my reach. If I know I’m covered in class, I’ll be less worried about letting go.”
