One of the program administrators call upon the attention of the crowd gathered in the lobby.
“Okay everybody, we’re going to be entering the auditorium next for the orientation presentations by the Dean of Academics and his staff. If you’ll form two lines please in front of both auditorium doors that would be great.”
Auditoriums. Zoey hated auditoriums. Zoey joined the line and made her way into the room.
“Please push all the way towards the center to make room for everyone. No empty seats in between.” Once everyone was settled, it began.
A slightly overweight man, with glasses in a button downed shirt, and sweat glistening off his forehead approached the podium.
“Hi all, I’m Tomassini, the Dean of Admissions, if you haven’t met me yet. So, we’re all very proud to have you here as members of the class of 2019.”
“There’s been an uptick in problems with academic dishonesty across all schools lately, so we need to have this talk first. You just received a paper with the MBA oath that you must sign and give to the people at the doors as you exit.”
Zoey hadn’t so much as asked a question yet in this program and yet she felt the eyes of the auditorium on her. As if she were guilty of this, despite not even sitting for a first lecture or starting an assignment. Behind her she could hear people giggling and talking about her, saying she would be the one to break the honesty oath.
And then she felt it…the dump of adrenaline and cortisol. Her heart started pounding, she felt her face flush. She worried how much of this could be seen by the administrators on the stage, knowing full-well that was ridiculous in a dark room of 200 people. She felt people’s eyeballs on her and heard them making remarks about how she would be the first cheater removed from the program. She wanted to leave but was in the middle of the row, and it was quite cramped. All she could do was accept all this and wait for her body to calm.
But she would need to learn to get a grip sooner than later or this sort of thing would spiral out of control.
All in all, it dawned on her…the time for preparation was at an end and now it was time to start the next stage of her life, for real. If she was going to make it, she needed to figure out how to keep her paranoia and hallucinations at bay or she’d sink like a stone in this program.
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