Response: Allyson Yuen’s Story #10, “College”

Well written with great development of relationships between the characters. Specifically, I thought the evolving dynamic between the roommate and the narrator was well handled (the narrator trying to appease the roommate with a green tee for St. Patrick’s, the blurring of boundaries, how after time spent together the narrator knows her roommate only does her laundry in the middle of the week), as well as the narrator and her boyfriend. The scene where she discovers he’s cheating on her was developed nicely—starting with the neglected present on the table and building from there. That said, there is a certain sketchy quality to all of the characters, which I’m assuming was intentional by the author, because the only names we’re given are for the two characters we never meet but that the narrator constantly refers to. So the world that the narrator has left behind and keeps meaning to get back in touch with is more detailed and real than the one she’s living in, if I’m getting this right, which is very cool (actually, it’s terrible, but for story material it’s great).

Which brings me to the part of the story I had trouble with, which was the ending, specifically the last paragraph. It may simply be an issue of expanding that last paragraph to something closer to a page, which I think would match better the pace of the rest of the piece, but the chronology of events gets confusing and quite a bit happens that gets left unsaid. Specifically, it takes her a month to notice she’s missed her period and she references “that night,” which, if she’s referring to the party, would have been 3 months ago. Also, it was also unclear when I was reading about the party that anything had happened besides lots of drinking and gossiping.

Overall, if I’m getting the ending right: her not treating college like a reality and her nostalgia for home means in the ends she has to face the even harsher reality of an unwanted pregnancy. I thought the pregnancy was a good way to wake the narrator up to reality, but it didn’t sit right for me with the rest of the story, because the focus seems to be more on her friends back home then her boyfriend. The tension of her constant “I’ll call Jessica and Sydney later” was the most interesting part of the story for me. This seemed more central to the story for me, especially in its structure (it’s repetition, the fact that only those two chars get names), then the pregnancy that happens at the end. It said more to me the narrator’s approach to life (reality is just around the corner, let’s just fill the empty space until we get there), especially college life. It’s not even necessarily that I ever need to see or find out any more about Jessica or Sydney, I just find that part of the story to be the most telling about the narrator.