The Man Who Would be the Real Indiana Jones

Of course, I never would tell Brian so, but he’s just not cut out for the part. Me? I’ve been a living reincarnation of the man since I was about ten years old. Everything I said and thought and did had to pass an Indy-caliber screening for approval before I went ahead with it. At first, as I cultivated my new image, my mother teased me, calling my new attitude just a "persona". But after a while, Indy and I merged together. As much as he became a part of me, I became him. People even say now that I look sort of like him.

I also got interested in classics and ancient civilizations, Latin, and a whole lot of obscure but cool academic stuff. And of course, I had to go The University of Chicago. You won’t believe how important it was to me. Since I got here, there have been times that I wanted to wear my Indy cap to class. I wore it a lot first, second, and third year until some dumb girl from Woodward Court asked me if I was prematurely bald or something, or if I had a reason to cover up my hair. Not that I cared what she thought, but I stopped wearing it during the winter. Right now, it’s at the back of my closet, ready for the spring sunshine.

"I am so sick of the common core," Brian said suddenly as the waitress brought us a large, deep-dish pesto pizza. Nothing in the world smells better than a steaming pizza on an arctic day. "Tell me what use I am ever going to have for calculus in the real world?" Brian added, feigning disinterest in the culinary masterpiece being laid before him.

I shrugged slightly, meanwhile noticing a couple of strawberry blond-headed girls in matching purple coats as they ducked into the Edwardo's doorway to escape the dangerous wind tunnel coming down 57th off the lake shore. Fools. Their ears were exposed and tinged scarlet in the cold. I watched absently as they chapped their mittens together and shivered in the doorway. At the same time, the waitress was busy cutting up our pizza and then served us the first slice before trotting off to wait on other customers.

One thing I'll say for Brian is, you never mind it when he's whining. The guy has a knack for making criticism sound entertaining. So it took a moment and a few bites of hot pizza for Brian's comment to sink in before I internally protested against it.

The common core was why I came to The University of Chicago! Well, that and because of my fantasy about being-about following in the footsteps of Indiana Jones. Who, by the way, would never have complained about a little challenge.

Okay, even I will admit that the common core at The University of Chicago is pretty intense. It sometimes seems sadistically cruel that the university has so many common class requirements in addition to the required classes for your major. So, for example, even if you were a pre-med like Brian once was, the U of C would expect you to understand Freud by taking sociology, and even if you were an anthropology major, you'd have to take enough biology to fathom gene therapy. A "Renaissance education" they used to call it in the good old days. A royal pain in the neck according to the students today. But, I can't help thinking, a lot of so-called useless academic crap often saved Indiana Jones' skin. Like on his quest for the Holy Grail. I just hope that all of the stuff I'm stuffing into my brain comes in as handy for me someday when I go off into the real world.