A Burning Question: Over-analyzing at its Finest

Why would a guy follow me to the bathroom?

Today I will ponder this question, because it is still really bothering me, and I thought you would be able to give me some more perspective on the situation if I explained it fully.

The scenario: It’s after physics lecture. I am walking down the stairs. Said guy (who I suppose I ought to point out is my friend) is walking behind me, talking to some other people. After physics lecture both of us have lab.

At the bottom of the stairs there are three main options: 1) go straight to exit the building. 2) go right to go down more stairs and go to lab. And 3) turn left, after which there are two options: a) turn left to go to the boys’ bathroom or b) turn right to go to the girls’ bathroom (or the drinking fountain, which is right before the girls’ bathroom.)

At the bottom of the stairs I choose option 3b, and the people said guy is walking with choose option 1.

Said guy now has, in my mind 3 reasonable choices. The first is to choose option 2 and go to lab (where he has to be in 10 minutes anyway.) The second is to choose option 3a, since he is a boy and boys are allowed to go to the boys’ bathroom. The third is to choose option 3b and stop at the drinking fountain before reaching the girls’ bathroom.

However, said guy made a choice that does not fit into the three reasonable choices I came up with. Said guy chose option 3b and walked past the drinking fountain. Now I never would have known he was there if I wasn’t in the habit of looking behind me as I go through doors. As I entered the girls’ bathroom we made eye contact and he was clearly facing the opposite direction of the drinking fountain. Here’s a diagram describing the situation:

said guy ---> direction of said guy’s body

eye contact of awkwardness

drinking fountain of innocence me

girls’ bathroom of sweet relief

So I must ask: Why was he there? And in that position? Here are the possibilities I came up with.
1) He forgot where lab was.
2) He forgot where the boys’ bathroom was.
3) He was headed for the drinking fountain and overshot it, then realized it after we made eye contact.
4) He was following me, which prompts a few sub-scenarios.
a) He thought I was going some cool way to get to lab that he didn’t know about.
b) He was following me while trying to get my attention in some way, but I did not hear him, then as we made eye contact my thoughts were “why did he follow me to the bathroom?” and his thoughts were “why is she ignoring me?”
c) He was actually following me. In the creepy stalker sense of the word.

While I fully understand the implications of assuming (that I’ll make an ass out of u and me) I am going to venture an assumption here. Since we have been here for over a year and have been taking classes in this building for more than half of that time, I believe it is reasonable to assume said guy is familiar with the building. This for the most part rules out possibilities 1, 2, 3, and 4a, unless he did something spacey.

I have chosen to rule out 4b as well, since I have pretty good hearing and I was able to hear him clearly the moment before said guy parted ways with his friends. (Also 4b makes me look really horrible in his eyes, since I would have been blatantly ignoring him, then making eye contact just as I went into forbidden territory, then thinking he is a creeper when he was actually doing something totally innocent.)

As you can see, this leaves me with only 4c, an unsatisfying possibility since it is the one that does not answer the eternal question: why would a guy follow me to the bathroom? 4c is a non-answer answer. It would be like if I asked “why is the sky blue?” and you replied “because it looks blue.”

Here are some responses I’ve gotten when I’ve told people about this situation (giving them minimal context):

Joe: Weird…
Me: Yeah, and I feel like I can’t ask him about it ‘cause it would make things awkward…
Joe: Wait he’s your friend? That’s creepy.
(I’m still not sure why it would be less creepy if said guy wasn’t my friend…)

Riley (or you, since this is kind of addressed to Riley): He was contemplating particle physics!

Niko: That’s creepy…
Me: It wasn’t all that creepy at the time
Niko: How was that not creepy!? Do you have stalkerholm syndrome? *+10 pun points!*

Tanvi: Awkward…

Mom: That’s bizarre!

So now there are a few things I can do. Forget it ever happened, ask said guy about it, or passive aggressively show him this analysis and see if he feels the need to explain himself… Thoughts? Suggestions? Faults in my logic? I really can’t figure this out on my own.

Much love,

Lola

PS: Sorry for breaking the usual back-and-forth rhythm, but I feel that we should make some sort of burning question exception.

When Gina Tries to be Informative and it Ends Up Being Boring

I realize my last blog post was not at all informative about my college life, and I decided this post should make up for it a bit. Unfortunately, I have a quiz tomorrow (for which I should be studying) and have decided to write a post instead. Therefore, in order to feel slightly productive, this post will contain a few things you may not have been expecting and have no particular need to read: all twenty amino acids including their 3-letter codes and their 1-letter codes, the Michaelis-Menten derivation, and anything else I decide to jot down.

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The parts you can ignore will be bracketed like this.
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I am going to Dublin! I have apparently forgotten to mention this to some people, so it needed to be said. I’m going with the orchestra January 11-18, and we will be playing Tchaik 5. (Really, though, who cares what we’re playing? Excuse for travel=awesomeness!)

On a somewhat related note, I am not currently playing in orchestra. Some of the wind players are doing a rotation system, and for the rest of the semester I am in wind ensemble. This sucks. Wind ensemble is not really a good venue for the bassoon. There are too many excessively loud instruments, so basically the only thing I’m ever told is “I could use about three times as much of you there” when increasing volume even slightly sacrifices tone. The fact that I am even bothered by sacrificing tone also makes me not fit in with the majority of the players in the group. They are used to playing “new music” which to me translates to “the modern interpretation of classical music where weirdness is valued over tone, pitch, and anything that actually sounds pleasant.” A director should never say, “you’re not trying to sound nice here.” You should always be trying to sound nice, otherwise why play? In short: the music is in general easy (read: boring), unpleasant, and since I cannot be heard I may as well not even be there.

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The Amino Acids

Alanine Ala A
Arginine Arg R
Asparagine Asn N
Aspartic Acid Asp D
Cysteine Cys C
Glutamine Gln Q
Glutamic Acid Glu E
Glycine Gly G
Histidine His H
Isoleucine Ile I
Leucine Leu L
Lycine Lyc K
Methionine Met M
Phenylalanine Phe F
Proline Pro P
Serine Ser S
Threonine Thr T
Tryptophan Trp W
Tyrosine Tyr Y
Valine Val V

I GOT 100% ON MY DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS PRELIM! AAAAHHHHHH YEAH! *Dances* I don’t really have much to add to that. I am math god hear me roar.

I GOT AN 86 ON MY P-CHEM PRELIM! AAAAAHHHHHHHH YEAH! *Dances* This is super exciting since P-Chem exams tend to have means in the 50s (or lower. I’m not sure what the mean on this test actually was, but P-Chem has notoriously low means.) It’s also really exciting because I studied really really hard for this test and it paid off. Apparently, I “understand” some quantum mechanics. (If you’ve ever studied any quantum mechanics you know why that is in quotes.)

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The Michaelis-Menten Derivation
will not show up here due to formatting! But here are the assumptions:

Steady-State Approximation, Well-Mixed Assumption, and the time rate of the enzyme-substrate compound is zero.

This past weekend was fall break, which gave me an excuse to cook delicious things and not leave my building for three days. I made chicken Cordon Bleu, broccoli, roasted potatoes, sweet potato fries, legit mac ‘n’ cheese, an omelet, a crepe, a PB&J, popcorn, and lots of tea. Fall break also gave me the chance to get quite a bit of work done and also watch quite a bit of TV. It ended up being in the upper seventies all weekend, and if I had felt inclined to go outside I’m sure it would have been lovely. (I know how lame that sounds. Honestly I am the world’s biggest homebody. When people complain about the weather, I’m like “why don’t you just not go out in it…?”)

I’m kind of out of things to say. The first round of prelims is over now, but I’ve spent the last three weeks just studying and doing homework. I am down to 7 states, and have been for a while, for license plate bingo. (Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee) I hope your first few weeks of school have been fantastic! And remember: gram-negative cells have a double-layer cell wall composed of 30% lipids!