I watch as the snow falls silently, and heavily, as I make my way up to a building. I ask someone making their way through the night with a bookbag, if this was the right building, “Voorhees Hall”, he nods, and without another words continues on, face bent to the snow swirling around him.

My thoughts of the college being made entirely from pieces of leftover castle is only confirmed, as I make my way up the steps; they creak and groan beneath my weight, one of the heaters comes to life and all you hear is CLANK! CLANK! CLANK! as hot water gushes through it.

I pass sign after sign pasted on the doors of the third floor, my footsteps echoing strangely off the hollow and empty walls.  The hallway is unusually bright, and absent of any usual paintings, student work or otherwise.  I stop suddenly in front of an open doorway; I’ve reached the room I’m looking for.

“Doctor…um…” I say quietly, my voice catching in my throat; even though I’ve whispered the question I can hear my voice, magnified ten-fold in the empty hallway.  The man sitting on his computer, typing away, looks up.

“You must be Jillian,” He says, getting up quickly from a desk, “I’m glad you found it, we just finished renovating this building…”

He waves dismally to the white empty walls in the weird hallway and ushers me inside.  He pushes the door closed, so that it comes close to clicking in its door frame, but not quite; a tiny sliver of light is seen on a bookcase nearby.

I blink and look around the room properly, my eyes adjusting to the dimmer light in this room.  It doesn’t look anything like an office, but merely part of a library, and a desk was accidentally placed here.  Bookshelves cover the largest wall, running the length of the room right up against a small window frame.  The bookshelves are huge, towering to the ceiling, and stuffed with all sorts of computer books.   You can barely make out the desk with all of the papers sitting on top of it.  The desk is stuffed between bookshelves, and looks like a dolls toy next to the towering books surrounding it.  There are piles of papers and folders everywhere there is room, which isn’t much.  A chair sits half-hazardously near the desk, and looks well-used.  I take off my jacket and look around.

“Yes, just there is fine,” He says, taking a stack of papers and shifting them to behind his desk, he points to the cleared square of space he left on the floor, and I set my jacket and bag down.

“Sorry, it’s…it must not be what you are used to - I usually clean I just didn’t have any time today…” He stammers, looking more and more embarrassed as he follows my eyes, looking around the room.

“It’s perfect,”  I say, grinning.

We introduce ourselves proper-like and he starts talking about what classes he teaches, what to expect at Carroll, and what his duties are as acting Chair of Computer Science, etc.  Pretty soon, we get down to talking about my required classes.

“Yes, it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”  He says, turning in his chair to look out the window as well.  His window overlooks a quad-type area, where the snow is falling thick and fast, sometimes I see it swirl up right past his window, as a gust of air pushes it around.

I start, realizing that he took my staring off into space as fascination.  He was just giving a lengthy description on the Object Oriented programming class I would have to take, first most likely, a Java class.  I lost track after he mentioned Eclipse; I’ve already taken two Java classes at ISU.

“I…yes, both beautiful, and terrible,” I say slowly, thinking of the long drive back to Milwaukee I’ll have to do, soon enough.  He nods, understanding.

“So, how many years do you think it will take you?”  He asks, sitting up a little straighter and turning back around, “Also, are there any classes that you are considering taking for the graduate elective perhaps?”

I look at him, blinking, dazed.  I suddenly feel like I’m sitting in on a test, the answer hangs in the air, tantalizingly close, but my brain is sluggish and unresponsive.

“I…maybe 3, 4 years?”  I stutter, looking at him for the right answer.

“It was an open-ended question,”  he says, grinning.  He brings up a list of the classes that are scheduled out for this summer, explaining how the registration process works, and flips open the small, green book that holds the list of required classes I need to graduate.

“So, according to this you will be done in 2.5 years, that is, if you take one class during each summer,”  He says, pointing to the piece of paper I’ve been writing like mad on for the past half-hour.  “So you’ll be what, 27, 28 then?  That won’t be so bad, if you want to continue with a Ph.D in the future, I mean.”

“I’ll be 24, er, 25 maybe,”  I say, doing quick Math in my head.  He gives a theatrical start of surprise.

“Oh, wow, you’re saying you’re 22 now?!”  He exclaims, looking at me as if seeing my plainly for the first time.  The look on his face is different, I can’t tell if he’s trying to figure me out or is mildly impressed, the shocked look remains on his face as he looks at me.  A few more minutes pass as I pack up my stuff, him talking excitedly about a new class he will be teaching in the fall.

Soon after that, we say our good-byes, and I’m on my way, feeling suddenly like my future is laid out before me, a very clear road.

I start with one class this Summer — should I write “INSANE” on my forehead now, or wait a few months, you think?

So I’m not one to believe in prophetic dreams, fortune tellers or anything of that sort, but even I can’t explain this one.

Earlier this week I had a dream…sometime. I was dreaming about normal dream-like stuff, involving ice-cream and sharks, and then it had to get all weird on me.  I dreamt that I was about 10 or 11, playing on the playground.  I’m playing tag with a bunch of kids.

“Save!”  A little boy says, running up to me and touching me on the arm.

“But, you’re not ‘It’,”  I say, thinking that he said ‘tag’.

“I said, ‘Save’,” He says.

“Save what?”

“It’s not save…what…”  He says, looking at me with his eyes wide.

“Save where?”  I ask tentatively, and he shakes his head.

“You should be asking ‘Save who?’,” He says, staring at me obviously.

“Tag!”  A little girl runs up to me and slaps me on the arm before adding, “You’re not supposed to be standing still…”

I wake up from that dream thinking I need to quit playing PS2 games so much in my free time.

Fast-forward to yesterday.  I’m driving home from work and I remember that the BloodCenter of Wisconsin is along the way from the research I did on the internet the other night.  I pull into the driveway.

“We’re not Red Cross,”  The woman behind the counter says immidiately, frowning.  I asked her if I could get some information about their blood drive, since I was no longer happy with the Red Cross.  It’s like I said something about the bastard child of the family; suddenly everyone is frowning at me.

“No I know you aren’t the Red Cross, I don’t like them because of…”  I say, exasperated.  Sighing, I pull up the sleeve of my long-sleeved business-casual shirt.  She gasps, but in the next second she is smiling and waving someone over.

“Yes, you can talk with her,”  She says a moment later to a woman about my age, with a long white coat and white pants on.  She ushers me into another, quieter room that looks like an office.

“Oh my god what did they do?!”  The woman exclaims after I show her my bruise from giving blood to the Red Cross.  She gives me a bunch of information and pamphlets, and pretty soon we’re laughing and joking like old friends.

“Well, I usually don’t tell people about this if they don’t ask, but there is a program called the National Marrow Donor Program that we participate in, or N-M-D-P,”  She says, explaining about bone marrow.

“Bone…barrow?  As in wheelbarrow?”  I ask, sounding like I ate a bowl of crazy-flakes for breakfast.

“No,”  She says, laughing, “It’s bone MARROW.”

She says that there is a lot of people that need it, a lot of sick people.  I ask if it hurts, and she says no.  Of course I don’t believe her, I mean, taking something OUT OF MY BONES.  Yeah, that’s gotta hurt.  I get up with all of my new papers about the bone marrow program and shake her hand.

“And, think of it this way, you can save…” She starts, coughing in mid-sentence.

“Save what?”  I ask, having strong deja-vu going on by now.

“It’s not save what,”  She says, before adding, “It’s save who.”

I stop shaking her hand for a split second before pulling away.

“There are a lot of kids and adults that have diseases that require bone marrow,”  She says.  We shake hands again.  She tells me to think about it overnight, and come in tomorrow, or another day, when I decide if I want to do this or not.

That night I researched like crazy the bone marrow program.  As it turns out she is right, if you don’t have a common allele or whatever it is, then you most likely will never be selected as a donor.  I go in today and the same woman is there.  She takes out a package that says “DO NOT TOUCH” and “CONTAMINATION WARNING” all over it.

“Alright, now you just have to swab your mouth with these,”  She says, leading me into the same room and handing me the small box,  “Now I can’t touch it, except the outside so just open it up and read the instructions.”

“So I take it the government now has access to my DNA after this, right?”  I joke, putting the last gigantic Q-Tip into the foam holder.  She laughs, but doesn’t answer directly.

Ah well, so what if I’m on the government top 10 most wanted by tomorrow.  I don’t know if anyone really is chosen to be a donor like me, the woman hinted to the fact that they need more people of non-Caucasian race to sign up for this. The lady also said that it is completely voluntary and I can withdraw my name at any time. However, I’m most afraid if I am chosen, that I will hyperventilate even before it is time to do anything.

I’ll probably never be chosen anyways.