At 3:30 Thursday, I was supposed to have my Islam and Gender class.

I arrived a few minutes early, and I sauntered in, ready to make my usual beeline for the seat in the back left corner. However, I encountered upon entering the room a girl standing too close to the door, looking at a message written on the blackboard in the back, which everyone else in the class was also twisted around looking at. All it said was "Thursday: Class in the library video forum room." Now, we knew from the previous class that sometime in the future we might have to go to the forum room to watch a documentary for class, but it wasn't on the syllabus for that day, nor had it been mentioned on the obsessively updated Blackboard course information page my professor maintains. So we all stared at the message, attempting to determine if it was meant for us. After waiting for a few minutes after class should have started, we all set off for the library, confident that since our prof was never late for class (that's just me), she must be waiting for us at the library.

We walked down the three flights of stairs to the basement exit, and we walked down the relatively short path to the library. It was like being transported back to grade school for a strange field trip. We arrived at the library and climbed the long staircase to the second floor. The class proceeded then down to the forum -- then stopped. At the back, I didn't know what was going on. I was too busy contemplating the fact that most of the people in this class seemed to know someone else in it whereas I knew no one (but I digress). Eventually we pushed our way forward, and I saw that the forum room was not in fact occupied by my impatiently waiting prof but instead by some sort of math or engineering class. Some other people checked the smaller video room as the rest of us stood gaping, with it slowly dawning on us that we had been greatly mistaken. After debating for a few minutes whether there were any other video theaters in the library (God knows there could be in that cavernous building -- I swear people live there), we headed back to our classroom.

The climb back up the steep stairs was tortuous, especially knowing a potentially annoyed prof could be waiting at the other side. Though I didn't want to encounter any more stairs for a long time, I strongly wished that the prof still wouldn't be there so that I could go home and sleep until dinner. Alas, I was disappointed in this regard, as the prof had appeared in the classroom after all. She was conferencing with a student who'd shown up late, and apparently we caught them soon before they would have set out looking for us, likely passing us along the way. It seems she'd had nothing to do with the message on the board -- it was mere coincidence that an ambiguous message somewhat related to our class had shown up on the one day she has been late all quarter.

Or was it?