BAILEY HALL—Nina Ojeda ‘28 was taking her seat in Tuesday’s CS1110 lecture when a furious fit of coughing from the seat behind her caught her attention. Turning around, she saw her classmate David Mendelson ‘28 with back arched and glasses askew, clearly straining to expel something abominable from his gullet.
“I’m fairly certain he was trying to pass a hairball,” reported the queasy-looking Ojeda. “I could barely hear the professor for all the racket he was making. The poor guy really needed a glass of water… or maybe the Heimlich maneuver.”
In point of fact, Mendelson had not consumed a glass of water all semester, subsisting instead on a diet of Celsius and Lipton Pure Leaf sweet tea purchased exclusively from Mattin’s Cafe. His coughing was symptomatic of an upper respiratory infection, which had been left untreated for upwards of a month while the aspiring software engineer practiced leetcode problems in the solitude of his dorm room in High Rise 5.
“I finally saw the doctor yesterday,” wheezed Mendelson, “…only I can’t quite remember what they said. I’ve got some bug that’s making me… throw errors. My… preconditions are a sign of some kind of mutable virus… some new invariant. I should get better in O(n) linear time, but they said I should stay home from lectures to reduce my classmates’… rep exposure. Fine by me. I still have thirty or forty more internship applications to fill out.”
In a subsequent check-up, Mendelson tested positive for Linux usage and was advised to remain in isolation indefinitely.
