Cheesed Off

Opening up a message to Gary, I saw that he wasn't online. That was to be expected, seeing as he had a full time job and everything. In a way I was a bit relieved - this meant I could just send the message and wouldn't be checking the chat every few minutes to see if 'message read', or even worse, the dreaded '...' indicating he was writing had appeared. I kept it simple - essentially just asking the same question I'd asked Bob - was this a one off drunk thing or was it something more? I added that I wasn't expecting an instant relationship or anything out of it, but I'd rather just know where I stood on it all. Perhaps not the most subtle or elegant way of phrasing it all, but if humans were build on solid foundations made up of our qualities, my two strongest ones would be 'awkward' and 'subtle as a brick'. If he couldn't deal with that now, then there was no way anything would ever happen between us!

After an hour or so, in which I read the same page of my notes at least five times, I packed up my stuff and tapped Ethan on the shoulder to let him know it was time to go. We had our first group project meeting, and I didn't want to be late. At this point all we knew were the other people making up our 11-strong team, and that this project would make up 40% of our grade this year (and therefore 16% of our overall degree classification!). We didn't know our topic, or the lecturer in charge of our team, and with it being so important to my degree I couldn't wait to find out. Luckily the project wasn't going to require much work before Christmas (especially so as I'd taken so many of my classes this semester) but I would have plenty of time after to really focus and make sure we did this as well as we could. I was also currently thinking about going for project engineering jobs after graduation, so figured this would be the perfect opportunity to find out if I was actually any good at leading a project.

Our room was in a building I'd not been in much, and was renowned for being a labyrinth, so it took us a little while to find where we were meant to be. Finally finding the right number, we were still the first people there. We'd barely sat down before a familiar face opened the door and I immediately realised who our assigned lecturer was...

Dr Lee. A perfectly nice man from South Korea, who had taught us basic process calculations in second year, but unfortunately his accent made it almost impossible to understand him. I always felt really uncomfortable complaining about it, because I respected him as a very clever man in his chosen field, and his English was incomparably better than my Korean. However... he had chosen a career as a lecturer in a foreign country, and that came with certain requirements regarding your ability to teach. It had taken us half the semester to realise the reason we could never replicate his equations was that he mixed up his letter sounds, and every person had written down incorrect equations. I'd spent hours trying to go through tutorials with him, and it took forever to work out even the slightest miscommunication in his teaching. Luckily, I suggested that it might be useful for a postgrad student to help out in tutorials to 'ease his load', and we learned the entire course from this poor unsuspecting postgrad guy.

Finding out that he was our assigned lecturer gave me a bad feeling right from the start. I knew that he'd be a lovely man to have around, but he would be useless if we had any technical problems that we needed help with - and I could guarantee 100%  that there would be countless issues. Sighing, I mentally stiffened my spine. OK, not the greatest start, but surely the best project managers come from making successes of the worst messes?

The rest of the group slowly arrived. It was a pretty good mix of people from my year, including Ian: a guy I've worked with before who I knew was a fellow exceptionally hard worker and perfectionist. There was one other girl, who I knew fairly well and knew she'd keep the group motivated to do well. There was only one guy I was worried about - he was notorious for being the class clown, not through any natural wit, but through his complete oblivion to anything going on in classes, if he ever even turned up for them.

Once everyone had turned up, Dr Lee handed out our project outline. Dr Lee then ran through the basic timeline of the project - research before Christmas, each of us designing a module of the overall plant, leading to a personal and group report, then the final presentation to our whole year plus invited industry experts. I zoned out and started skimming through the outline - all of the logistics had been available online for the past month so I knew what he was saying already. It took me a while to understand exactly what we'd been asked to do. It looked like some kind of solids processing plant design, specifically for potassium chloride crystals for fertiliser... but apart from one very brief introduction to solids last year, we hadn't been taught anything about it. I didn't even know what kind of equipment we'd have to design. However, the flip side of that was that I knew most of the lecturers had very little solids processing experience as well, so hopefully that meant easier questions when it came to the final presentation and question panel.

After Dr Lee finished explaining the marking model, we were finally able to discuss the assignment. Part of the new system was each of us taking turns chairing our weekly meetings, so I volunteered to be the first chairperson. At this point there wasn't much we could do though, especially as none of us had the first idea where to start with this kind of process. We needed to come up with at least two different methods of designing this plant, with a separate distinct section for each of us to 'own' the design. We determined our rough timeline for the project, when our weekly meeting would be, set up a google documents to share research on, and finished early. Dr Lee tried to convince us to stay longer and brainstorm initial ideas for the plant, insisting that we had been taught this stuff already. Breathing deeply (not a great sign that he was getting to me so soon), I disagreed, with the rest of the group agreeing with me. When he finally seemed to accept that we were right (and muttering to himself about the curriculum needing changed to include such 'basics'), we escaped with some relief.

As I headed down the corridor, laughing with Ethan about how clueless our lecturers could be, Ian ran and caught up with me.

"Hey Jane, mind if I have a quick word?"

Waving Ethan to go ahead without me, I nodded. "No problem Ian, how can I help?"

"I just wanted to warn you... I've got a few friends who have just graduated who have been warning me about this project - it's something we need to spend a lot of time on to make sure it gets finished to a decent quality and before the deadline, as it can spin out of control very quickly."

I immediately agreed with him. "I know, I've heard pretty much exactly the same from people. I'm actually planning on setting a deadline for our group report a couple of weeks before the actual deadline - we probably won't meet it but at least it'll force us to get the work done a lot earlier so it's less of a panic, and then we can all focus on our individual reports."

"That sounds like a really good idea, I'm definitely on board with that." Ian paused for a second, smiling at me. "I have to say, I was really happy to see you were in my group for this, I know you'll push us to produce an excellent project. And don't feel this is all on you - I'm more than happy to put extra hours into this project to make sure we get the best grade, so you can always rely on me to get things done."

Touched, I grinned back at him. "Aw, you charmer! But seriously, that's really good to hear - I was over the moon to see you in the group too. Despite this weird assignment, I know we'll get through it all somewhat intact!" He waved and headed off to catch up with his friends as I turned right towards the bike racks.

Even though I'd known Ian was a hard worker, it was still a relief to hear out loud that he cared as much about this project as I did. I was definitely a bit of a control freak in group projects - my grades were extremely important to me, and it took a lot before I trusted someone enough with important pieces of work. It wasn't a good attitude to have, as it often resulted in the rest of the group quite happily leaving me with the overall work, and leaving me a burned out mess by the end of it (albeit one with top marks). This project was far bigger than any group work we'd been assigned before, and I had to learn to delegate else I wouldn't cope with the rest of the year. With the project counting for so much it wouldn't be easy, but knowing Ian was there to help eased my mind.

Tying on my helmet, I started pedalling down to the astroturf pitches for football practice. I'd warned my coaches that I'd be a bit late due to the project meeting, but if the traffic lights favoured me I would probably just make it in time. That was perfect with me - I didn't want to get there early and have to talk to anyone about the match and my meltdown over my performance.

Arriving at the pitches out of breath but nicely warmed up, I grabbed my football bag, took a deep breath and ran over to where the girls were already stretching.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Throwing my football boots into my cupboard and showering little plastic astroturf chips everywhere, I frowned into my mirror. OK, so I hadn't wanted anyone to comment on the fact I got upset at the football match - it was embarrassing and I didn't want to get a reputation as being stroppy or too emotional over games. However, I'd expected Bruce to say something. Anything! I don't know what I'd been expecting - no, I lie, what I had expected was for Bruce to say something along the lines of "I spoke to Ryan and we realised that it was unfair for you not to play the whole friendly, and for us not to consider you for any games when you are clearly the most loyal and reliable player in the team." Or something along those lines at least - god, even an "are you OK?" would have been enough!

I'd been trying to convince myself for the last week that my feelings at the match had been wrong, that it was selfish of me to be so upset over this, but damn it, I WAS the most reliable player. I was the only player who turned up to training every. Single. Week. I was the only person who came along to watch every single match as a spectator, despite never being picked, despite being in my nightmare year of uni, despite the fact it killed me to watch from the sidelines week after week after week. On top of this I was putting hours in each week as Treasurer of the team to try and make ends meet with our rapidly shrinking supply of money, and both of the girls in charge of fundraising had decided they 'didn't have time to fundraise on top of uni and playing games', so I'd been lumped with doing two of the committee roles all by myself, and I was really, really reaching my breaking point.

I was pinching my nose to try and hold back tears when my internal ranting was interrupted by my ringtone - currently the classic James Bond theme song. Scrabbling through my bag to find it, I glanced at the screen to see if it was a call I needed to take - I wasn't sure my voice could hold up to a normal conversation right now. Unfortunately, it was Alyssa, and with my parent's 50th birthday weekend coming up in four days, I quickly wiped my eyes and pressed answer.

"Hey! So, have you got all the presents?" That was Alyssa, straight into the organising. However, as a fellow organised freak, I definitely appreciated the distraction right now.

"Almost! Ray says he'll have the cake ready for me by Friday, and he'll give me a lift back to the flat after uni so I don't have to carry it, and it'll be as fresh as it can be for the weekend. The cricket tickets have been bought - sorry, I forgot to tell you I'd done that. We actually lucked out - I've had to go for the 4th day of the test match, but we're only three rows from the front so that should be a great view. What about you?"

"Good, well I've got everything - all of the food has arrived and it's in my basket, apart from the cheese I asked you to order. Has it arrived?"

Ah. I'd completely forgotten Alyssa had asked me to do that - the rest of the food had ended up being a bit expensive so I'd offered to buy the Lancashire creamy, crumbly and tasty cheese that my dad loved so much (and yes, those are the actual names for the three cheeses - you can't say Northerners aren't practical in their naming!). I had actually bought them but I'd completely forgotten about them arriving... but thinking through, I hadn't seen a 'missed delivery' note.

"No, they haven't arrived yet, but I was worried about the cheese staying fresh so it should be arriving by Wednesday this week. I'll contact the seller and see if they have a tracking number I can use though." OK, it was a bit of a white lie. I had delayed delivery, but I was certain it should have arrived before the weekend... Now, I was just worried that the postman hadn't left a delivery note and the cheese was languishing in a distant post office depot somewhere. My only hope was that Scotland wasn't known for it's warmth at this time of year, so hopefully the warehouse was acting as a giant fridge!

Alyssa wasn't particularly happy about me 'leaving delivery that late' but she couldn't argue with it.

"But Jane, if that cheese isn't there, it's completely your fault OK? And you can tell mum and dad that."

"Yes, Alyssa, I'll make sure it gets there! And I'm sure I can cope telling them that, at worst case I'll buy dad some Wensleydale cheese as a back-up and tell him the story, he'll appreciate the thought!"

"Hmph. Thoughts don't make amazing 50th birthday presents. But it's on you." She paused then, and the line fell silent for a moment too long, which immediately made me feel like something was up.

"Hey, you OK? This weekend will go absolutely fine, I promise, mum and dad will just be really happy to have us all together again."

She sighed. "No, it's not that, it's nothing." My big sister spidey sense went from tingling to full on alert.

"Nothing seems to have got you worried... Must be a pretty important nothing!" I teased her, trying to get her to open up. Alyssa was a bit funny at times, some things she would vent about for hours but on others it was like trying to open an uncooked mussel to get any details out of her.

"Ugh! If I tell you, you can't tell anyone. Seriously Jane, I mean it." Spidey sense update - boy troubles suspected.

And confirmed as she continued. "There's a guy from orchestra... and we went on a date, and it actually went really well. And we're going on a second one. But I'm just expecting him to do what everyone else has done and just mess me around until I've decided I do like him and then he'll bail."

Wow. Alyssa never talked boy stuff with me - this guy must have really gotten to her. Admittedly, there was a reason we never talked about this kind of stuff, because I had no idea what to really say back.

"Well, he must be pretty special for me to hear about him! But I don't know, Alyssa. I know guys have been awful to you in the past, and I don't want to be the one to push you into a situation like that again if he is another jerk. But you're the only one who can make the decision as to whether he is jerk material, and it depends if you'd rather know for sure and potentially get hurt, but also potentially be really happy, or if you could deal with always wondering what if." I nodded to myself - that came out marginally better than it had been in my head.

Alyssa snorted a little over the phone. "Trust you to give me the most depressing 'go for it' speech in history! But, you're right. I know. And he does really seem different."

"So... do I get to know any more about him? Name, maybe?" I quickly flicked my iPad on and opened up facebook, ready to go for some immediate stalking of this potential brother-in-law.

"Ha! No. You'll just go straight back to mum with it."

"Lies! Such lies!" I exclaimed, but couldn't hold back my laugh. It was true. There was no such thing as a secret in my family, all secrets shared between siblings found their way back to mum at one point or another. Plus, by pooling our information, mum and I had become really good at finding Alyssa's guys on facebook in the past. We have no shame.

"I'll tell you this though - he's fourth year and an engineer."

"Yesss!" I cheered enthusiastically over the phone, trying to make Alyssa laugh and succeeding. "I immediately approve. Engineers are awesome."

"Yeah, yeah, I've just told him any engineer chat and he's out the door, I get enough of that at home from you and dad!"

Laughing, we said our goodbyes and I hung up, feeling much better than I had before. As I whatsapped mum saying "New Alyssa gossip - engineer man alert!", Dave stuck his head round the door.

"Were you... cheering just then?" He asked bemusedly, eyeing me lying on my bed in half of my football gear, boots and shinpads strewn haphazardly around the room.

I grinned. "Yup! Alyssa is dating an engineer!"

He groaned. "Oh god. Not more of you. I swear there's enough engineering graduates around to take over the world sooner or later."

I threw a cushion at him from my bed whilst he was speaking and hit him full in the face. He made a face in mock outrage, before stealing the cushion and running back into the corridor, yelling over his shoulder.

"Well, I was going to tell you Agents of SHIELD was about to come on, but I'm not sure I want to watch it now with you in such a violent mood..."

Giggling, I yelled I'd be through in a second and started speed-changing from football gear into pyjama bottoms and a hoodie. The pile of notebooks on my desk stared at me, but I obstinately ignored them as I headed towards the door. With being away for my parents' 50th this weekend, there was an insane amount of work to do before then, but for now the night belonged to curling up on a sofa, watching TV, and eating home-made cookies with my best friend - exactly as it should be.