Has this ever happened to you?

It’s the first week of school and you’re sitting in your eleventh grade English teacher’s office and in walks the club advisor for the club that you’re the president of. Your mind fills with wonderful ideas for the upcoming school year: new members, new articles, new memories. You turn to said advisor and you say “Hey Mr. Pail. Aren’t you so excited for the 2023-2024 year of the Sad dish?!” He turns back and utters 5 simple words that make the glimmer of hope leave your eyes, “Oh. You’re gonna hate me.”

The first thought that runs through your head is, He can’t seriously be pregnant. This is going to be like the fifteenth time we’ve lost an advisor because they’ve gotten pregnant. What’s with these English teachers? Have they ever gone to the nurse’s office before? But what comes out of his mouth would be worse than your average sized head could ever imagine.

“I’m getting married in a couple weeks.”

Oh god. This was worse than you thought. If he’s getting married that means he’s gonna be gone for 2-3 weeks tops! That's such an inconvenient time frame! Too long of a time that you can’t meet for a couple weeks, but too short of a time that you can’t get a completely new advisor.

You decide to ignore the problem for now and face it when it surfaces again.

Then the problem surfaces again.

So what do you do? You ignore it and you decide to wait it out. Mr. Pail can meet October 25th, surely your club members can wait until then right? WRONG! Everyone keeps asking you left and right when the next meeting is. “I DON’T KNOW! MR. PAIL IS GETTING MARRIED.” They expect you to know when he leaves. They expect you to know when he gets back. They expect you to know the location and number of guests at his wedding. You don’t know that stuff! And frankly you’re offended you’re not the best man at the wedding!

Nonetheless the weekend before October 25th rolls around and you’re ready to have this first meeting until you receive an email from the president of the TCT (Tech Club Team, if you recall) that contains the dates of this year’s club fair. Lo and behold, one of the days is October 25th. Erm what the flip man. Now you don’t know whether you can hold your meeting or not because the TCT is withholding the date that your club is supposed to attend. You can’t start planning for the meeting on October 25th because you might have to participate in the club fair instead. And even if your club is supposed to attend on October 26th, some other club might be using the room instead. Ugh.

Now you’re confused, discouraged, and a little bit hungry because you haven’t eaten dinner yet. So what are you going to do? You’re going to write an official explanation to your club and to the people about why you haven’t had a meeting yet. You sit at your desk and you start drafting, but everything sounds too formal. Your club isn’t formal. So you decide to write the explanation in the form of another article. You open up a new google doc, sit down on your couch, and the first line just pours right out:

Has this ever happened to you?

Of course this has happened to you. This is a universal experience!

(ps. Thanks to phoenix for helping me right this, and on the behalf of the exec board, we’re sorries 🥺)