When Killanaus returns home that night, he hastily uses the sonic shower to wash himself prior to going to bed. And his parents don’t notice anything, at least for the time being.

  However, the following morning, Killanaus wakes up a little groggy, his head spinning with all these questions he must find answers for, and wondering what he got himself into, along with the path he is about to walk down. And angry parents to top that off.

  “Why did you return home late last night?” his dad yells at him.

  “My professor summoned me to a special meeting off-campus because of concerns that he doesn’t feel right voicing on-campus. It's about the internship I’m about to land for the next season!”

  “I get that you’re trying to set yourself up for a future after graduation, but what kind of professor would allow students to work on such sensitive research projects for only one season, without asking for a security clearance? I feel like the professor has concerns about your involvement rather than the project itself!”

  “Dad, I had enough of you questioning my every move! It’s not that I didn’t try to get more savory internships, but better that than nothing! I know how concerned you are with post-graduation jobs, and even working on a sensitive project is worth it so long as you make the most out of it! And the prof didn’t want to talk about a security clearance just yet! But he implied that he would sponsor me for one!”

  “What’s your project about then?”

  “All I can say for now is that you have no need to know what that project is about, and I won’t get more details yet, only that abductions are part of the deal!”

  A bulb flashes in Killanaus’ mind as the two keep yelling at each other about his internship. Now I have a better idea of how to deal with my nosy parents: I don’t want to jeopardize my security clearance!

  “Abductions? Is your seasonal internship some kind of cruel joke?”

  “I know it’s a little taboo, but my professor also mentioned that my career goals would be better served by attending a graduate program granting... abduction licenses!”

  “What jobs require an abduction license?”

  “Do you want to work in law enforcement or public security?” his mom yells at him.

  “It’s too early to discuss what I want out of my abduction license! I need to study, get good grades and then I can keep my options open!”

  Sometimes I envy Qinlei or some of these grad students, some of whom left their home regions for a research interest. They have freedom I don’t have. Curfew is too early, I lack flexibility in my schedule so that I often get disturbed by my parents in my coursework for chores that can and should be moved around, but I wonder how long I will stay on that UFO, or ultraspace-faring orbiter, Killanaus then brings his tablet as he’s about to take his hoverbus trip to campus, along with his lunch.

  “You stay home, you must be in bed by midnight!” his father keeps scolding him.

  “Look, dad, I accepted to stay home for undergrad so that I wouldn’t need to take out loans. And also that what I do in undergrad is more important than where, at least for science fields. However, people who get better grades than I tend to have later or no curfews!”

  Except that the department’s top students tend to be split into 3 categories: those who want a second chance for healthcare professions, the pre-law crowd, or the last one, who want to do research on some level, the student sighs. I’m closest to the last one.

  “It’s for your own good that you must be in bed by midnight!”

  “Yet it’s holding me back! I can’t always study whenever I’d have liked, nor as much as I feel like I needed! If I want to one day hold an abduction license, I need to study more now!”

  “If that’s what you want, transfer and then you’re on the hook for room and living expenses! We’ll only pay for tuition, fees and course materials!”

  “If it makes financial, as well as academic sense to leave home for grad school, I’ll do it! But to get there... I have enough of this!” Killanaus then storms off to the hoverbus stop.

  So he arrives a little early at the biology commons to study with other people taking the cell signaling test. The early birds include people who mostly cram, and feel like their only choice is to ask other students around for help when needed.

  Speaking of which, one of those “pre-laws” starts asking him questions about molecular receptors, and how they relate to chemicals. Like hormones or enzymes.

  “Say that you have a certain type of receptor that only accepts a certain type of transmitter. The signal strength is then related to the concentration of said transmitter. However, there are some receptors that require a minimum concentration to work, and these are called low-cut receptors” Killanaus explains one of the key concepts common to endocrine and paracrine signaling.

  “I guess, high-cut receptors can’t accept more than a certain concentration of a molecule...” Majuro, the blue-skinned, pre-law student, sighs, as the next question rolls around.

  “You know that the difference between endocrine and paracrine signaling pathways is the distance at which they could act, but do you have any idea of what could make a paracrine factor different from an endocrine one?”

  To this, his classmate draws a blank. What I really need is better grades; I don’t think I would need to understand cell signaling at that depth after the course ends. They say law school admissions offices adjust for the difficulty of a major. Biology is hard, but you can earn better grades in labs by performing experiments with the right people.

  “I don’t know... molecule lifespan?” Majuro hesitates, unsure of his answer.

  “We all want good grades. Yet you’re a typical low-angle student, in that you tend to get by mostly by memorizing!” Killanaus scolds Majuro. “But first, there are some factors that affect molecule lifespans, and there are other properties that make a molecule a paracrine factor rather than an endocrine one!”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “High-angle students… they think that depth can make up for knowledge gaps!” the pre-law scoffs at the notion that Killanaus’ learning style might help him more than hurt.

  Welp. Molecular properties count for a lot in all kinds of cell signaling pathways… this discussion pushes the pre-law student to review what molecular properties come into play. But when Qinlei arrives, after having overheard her erstwhile lab mate:

  “Sorry, but he’s right. Law school admissions, while considering the difficulty of an applicant’s major, are more likely to want students who can at least understand the material some. Knowing without understanding won’t get you far!” Qinlei lectures the blue-skinned student. “So if your grades’ angles are too low, it’ll hurt you!”

  The trio of students go over a past mid-season exam for that course, seeing what tended to score high on the x-axis and, more importantly for some students, how to score high on the y-axis. As far as I’m concerned, multiple-choice questions are all about grabbing those points on the x-axis. That is, knowledge. There is only so much understanding you can show, and hence score points on the y-axis, with only that kind of questions, Qinlei keeps to herself while she tells the other two what she feels the instructor for that course wants to see in either type of long-answer questions.

  “So I might be wondering why you two seem so obsessed about trying to raise the angle of my grade in this course…” his face starts to turn purple. “I’m afraid you two are trying to force a learning style that doesn’t fit me!”

  “Honestly, you might have forgotten that grades are vectors!” Qinlei retorts.

  “This vector grading system is implying that knowledge and understanding are independent of each other!”

  “In first approximation, they are. You can know a lot and understand nothing about any of it, or know very little but understand what little you do know in great depth. And these are the extreme cases of low-angle and high-angle grades respectively” Killanaus explains to him.

  “Fine, I get it, the correlation between the two isn’t perfect, but you would think that any correlation between the two would be positive!”

  “Hence first approximation. It’s a lot more complex to calculate a grade’s magnitude if you incorporate imperfect correlations, and angles would be meaningless then!”

  As much as I might loath Majuro, I can’t believe he, even in his worst day, would act as if he forgot about what each direction in a grade means… Yet, that was a fundamental every college student should know by now, at least in science, Killanaus sighs, while mired in this quarrel about the meaning of grades.

  “Then again, if correlation was perfect, then you could reduce a grade to a single number, and not have grades earned under the XI+YJ format... Before we resume our studying of cell signaling, know the following: understanding the structure of tests and other coursework will go a long way for studying!” Qinlei tells the other two.

  What did I do, or fail to do, to get lectured on studying skills? They made me feel like I didn’t know how to study! Majuro then turns to other students to resume studying, while leaving the pair to their own devices.

  “But at the same time, you can’t know less than nothing about a given topic, can you?” Killanaus asks Qinlei.

  “Of course not. But can misunderstanding a topic amount to understanding less than nothing? Yes, there are times when you misunderstand something because you might focus too much on one aspect, or otherwise miss pieces”

  “I’m sure it’s very illuminating, but I need to review my class notes, or rather we need to do it! Together if it helps...”

  And both people review, in turn, autocrine and intracrine pathways, and how some people view intracrine as a subset of autocrine because while autocrine factors, while produced by the cell it acts on, may act inside of it, or on its outer membrane, whereas intracrine ones only act inside the producing cell. When they get to juxtacrine pathways, they realize they just didn’t cover a whole lot of that before the mid-season tests, so they need to focus on that for the time being. Or pray, as a few others do, that there won’t be much coverage of juxtacrine pathways on the upcoming test. They then go to the testing room, which is a computer lab.

  Speaking of which, once they arrive at the testing room, the proctor, who has no knowledge of the course material, begins with the usual precautions for just about any test as the students get seated in opaque cabins:

  “Good luck everyone, and, if you get a poor grade in any direction, it’s not the end of the world. Please note that every electronic device in your possession must be shut down and brought to the front of the room. If you have any questions about the test items, please press the button next to the curtain control and I will send for the instructor!” the proctor asks.

  When the test begins, the curtains fall behind the test-takers, who are treated to some sort of failsafe mode for a closed-book test.

  As they take the test, it becomes clear to the proctor that there’s a rift between those who have a solid foundation in chemistry (and physics to a lesser extent) and those who don’t. And, of course, the practitioners of the infamous “fire-and-forget” study method who approach test-taking like a game.

  I really ought to do well on this test, and hope my parents will stay off my back, at least until the mid-season tests end. 35% of the course’s final grade depends on it, Killanaus starts shaking in his seat, while he gets to the two long-form questions. Try not to think about parental reactions, and just focus on the test!

  As much as he could try to just focus on the test, as soon as he reads about exosomes in the statement for the second long-form question, he can’t help but think about the implications of that test for his life outside of the material. Like his parents yelling at him if his grade on that test is unsatisfactory to them.

  mRNA strands travel across living organisms through exosomes, which can cause them to affect cells far away from the cell of origin. Other endocrine factors can travel that way, but not all of them... he sighs as he struggles to limit the scope of his answer, feeling like his answer could be too long. But he keeps trucking, along with the rest of his section.

  When the test ends, he feels like he couldn’t provide the answer he wanted, because there were a lot of implications for the use of exosomes, and he was running out of time to write down everything. Then again, so do a lot of people in his own section.

  A few minutes later, they return to the biology commons, where they see other biology students reviewing the material for their own tests, sometimes over food. As Qinlei stands in line to get her bio food:

  Killanaus (texting his friends taking the course): The cell signaling test grades are now out

  Woohoo! 100% at pi over four! Killanaus consults his grade, realizing that he got a perfect grade on that test, and in his hardest course for the season. Which he then texts his parents about.

  “They say grades aren’t the be-all, end-all of someone’s education, but there’s a reason why you should aim for the best grades possible” Majuro harangues the other students in the commons. “But not only you tend to forget the material over time, grades are what remain when that happens. Most importantly, having good grades are helpful if you need, at some point, to change careers, and you know additional education is required to make it happen. And, while a lot of you won’t admit it right now, some of you will have careers where you hit an educational roadblock along the way”

  “On top of that, for those here who study biology to get a second chance to study and, hopefully, practice healthcare professions, sometimes access to continuing education might be blocked if your past grades are too low in either direction!” Keyela, a pre-med, adds to what Majuro just said. “It sucks, but it goes for law, too…”

  Healthcare professions, other than nursing anyway, often require near-perfect grades to study right out of high school. While some might be willing to “settle for” allied health professions after failing to get into med or dental school, others might major in biology to get grades good enough to even practice an AHP to begin with, Keyela reflects on her colleagues’ past experiences with college admissions.

  Killanaus’ parents send a cryptic message about how he should approach the rest of the exams:

  Killanaus’ dad: Don’t go around thinking that you’ll always get perfect grades!