Being a student comes with a lot of pressures.

I’m in my 3rd year of kinesiology at a small-ish Midwestern University.

In my first year, it was all about the partying. I would stay out late and dance and drink and do all the stuff that young people are supposed to do. But quickly, I learned the hard way that university is also about responsibility.

My grades crashed, and I almost had to redo some of my classes. So the second year, I learned my lesson and really began applying myself.

I would put twice as much effort as required into every assignment. I’ve had my fun, and now it’s time to work.

About 3 months ago, I was up working late in the 24-hour computer lab. I had major English assignment due the next day, and it was worth a significant portion of my mark. I had started the outline at home, and saved the word file to my USB stick.

I got there around 10pmshoved my USB stick into the terminal, and began typing away.

About 6 hours and 8 coffees later, I was finally done. I was running of fumes, but it was all worth it.  I saved the file to the network, printed off the file, and bolted out the door to my nice comfy bed.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized my USB stick was still in the terminal at the lab. I rushed over to get it, but it was hopeless. The pen drive was gone.

Normally, this wouldn’t be such a big deal since I always save to the school network. But the USB stick also contained some pictures of a “personal nature”, taken by me and my boyfriend. These were meant for intimate moments, not to be seen by strange eyes.

My school is pretty big, but not so big that a person like me could be anonymous. Everyone still sort of knows each other, and a personal embarrassment like this would spread pretty fast. As far as I know, the files haven’t made their way around. Hopefully, they’ve been destroyed.

But for the rest of my term, I’ll be looking over my shoulder, paranoid of the potential embarrassment hanging over my head. It’s gotten me so nervous that I’ve actually considered changing schools at one point.

But thankfully, the worse hasn’t happened yet. And if it hasn’t happened by now, it’ll probably never happen. So I can at least count myself fortunate for that.

But it was a real learning experience.

Anonymous