Note: I wanted to write something else today, but this came out instead. It's a short piece, and I may or may not add any more to it. 

It’s been exactly one year since I started my first semester at university, following a few years of community college. While I’ve grown much more comfortable with university over the last year or so, I still can’t really believe that I’ve made it this far… and am still going farther. 

As such, I still very much feel out-of-place at university for a myriad of reasons. Sure, I get good grades. Sure, I’m fascinated with science, especially Biology-the study of living things. But, I’m still the campus oddball, and I still lack the words to describe what exactly I mean by that (but I’ll still try… again). 

Last semester, I joined my Microbiology professor for office hours because I’d missed one of his lectures, and there was an exam coming up. About twenty minutes into him walking me through his lecture slides, he mentioned how we (as scientists) have managed to make farm-raised Salmon grow three times bigger than wild salmon via genetic engineering. 

“Well, I guess I won’t have to hold the fish up to the camera anymore…” I mumbled, smirking to myself. 

“Pardon?” my professor (who was- and is- the Biology department chair) asked. 

“I guess I won’t have to hold the fish up the camera anymore.” I repeated myself, still smiling. 

My professor stared at me for a moment as the joke flew completely over his head. 

“I mean…” I cleared my throat after a long, awkward silence, “After you catch a fish, you’re supposed to hold it up to the camera to make it look much bigger than it really is. Y’know, so you can brag about it later on. With these massive, GMO fish, you wouldn’t have to hold them up to the camera to make them look big.”

My professor finally got the joke, but he wasn’t laughing. Instead, he just moved on with the lecture as I felt my face turn hot with embarrassment.