Six thirty a.m. at the Louis Armstrong International Airport. Who books a flight for that early in the morning? Answer: a scholarship foundation. Once a year, every year, all scholars go to the Mentoring and Leadership Conference.
My phone lit up with a text from another scholar: Are you here yet? I’m at the gate. Deja was a scholar I had never met in person but our flight was booked together, so we decided to meet at the gate before takeoff. Knowing that she was a Xavier student, I already had a stereotype in my head of her. Deja would be applying to STEM internships at the gate, unlike me. Instead, I’d probably be chilling out and scrolling on Tik-Tok. Your typical type a and type b flyer.
I hadn't slept. I'd spent the night packing for the four days in New Jersey. The pressure was on already. Things were moving too fast for sleep. Cars swished in and out of lanes. Luggage wheels scraped the pavement. Then, there was the yelling coming from my parents about being on time to my flight...their voices drowned out everything else.
“Baby, you don’t have time for this,” my dad affirmed as I stuffed an item in the top pocket of a suitcase he handed over.
I didn't have time for anything. It had been that way ever since I was awarded the scholarship actually. Since my junior year of high school, I’d been on what seemed like the never-ending hamster wheel towards success. Or at least a quest for parental approval. I did not know if I was excited about the conference or just felt an obligation to my role. Either way, MLC attendance was one of many promises I made to keep my award.
After hugging my dad goodbye, I was suddenly under fluorescent airport lights with travelers from all over. I was heading to a world my parents knew little about. I grew up spending most of my time between the 7th and 17th wards of New Orleans. My gifted ticket would have Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) listed as the destination. But the real destination was a world of other perfectionist, overachieving students with impossibly high cortisol levels.
I rushed from the check-in area and down the escalator. This would have been a good time for me to have kept CLEAR, which allows people to skip the line.
After the awkward TSA check, I stopped at Smoothie King. Reaching in my bag to retrieve my wallet, I realized something: Where is my laptop?!
My heart was beating to the drum of time, as I ran back to TSA. I checked with the security workers one by one. Finally, someone had the answer to my prayers: my laptop. Thank goodness!
“We announced it over the intercom a couple times, did you not hear?” In my rush from TSA to Smoothie King, I never checked that I had my Mac. Again, I am a type b flyer. Apparently, type b flyers are the kind who wait until the last minute to pack and also leave laptops behind.
I let myself catch my breath for a moment as I put the laptop away. Losing it would have been like losing the younger version of myself. All of my high school dreams were saved files in the form of countless college essays. Like me, the rose gold metal of the machine had accumulated some scratches. Nevertheless, the two of us carried on.
I walked to the gate where Deja should have been waiting for me. At first I couldn't find her, but then I finally saw someone squinting in my direction, wearing a sky blue Xavier University hoodie.
“Hey, are you Deja?” I shyly asked.
“Yes! Sorry," she said. "I was squinting at you like a crazy person. I left my glasses at home and can’t see anything.”
I let out a laugh. Perhaps the pressure had gotten to her, too.
