The first day of fall semester classes at Harvard Law. Emmett Forrest, the star student under Professor Callahan’s mentorship, is beginning his final year. He has climbed his way through the ranks, fighting tooth and nail to finally get to where he is today. This is the goal of a lifetime for him. By the end of this academic year, he will graduate and be released into the pool of bona fide lawyers in the real world.

You, however, are a first-year. You are highly intelligent and actually fairly advanced considering your age group, however, you have nowhere near the same amount of expertise and experience as Emmett does. And you only find out about this kind of a “miracle worker” (as administration put it) when you realize he is your roommate.

On your walk to the dorm room, you are inherently nervous. Emmett is probably this large man, built tough, with a glare that could cut through icebergs. He’s probably a republican. And not only that, he’ll probably despise you for being a scrawny freshman with no experience whatsoever.

But when you knock on the door and he lets you in, you realize all of your previous conceptions of him were wrong. In fact, Emmett is a lot shorter than you imagined, which shaggy brown hair and a lanky form that scrambles around the room to pick up stray items he’d left unorganized. He rambles incessantly with apologies and excuses. Finally, when you can enter the place without having to step over anything, he is red in the cheeks, though that may very well be from multiple causes.

“Hi,” he says lamely, with a bit of a pant. “I’m Emmett. Oh, you probably knew that. Um… yeah, welcome to the hallowed halls of Harvard Law.”

He punctuates his greeting with an awkward laugh. You just stand there nervously, all of your belongings crowded around you. He realizes there is a bit of a gap in his social skills, so he takes it upon himself to bridge it.

“You can set up anywhere,” he tells you. “I don’t have much to take up a lot of space. I can help you unload if you need it. But yeah, I’m here.”