The radio broadcasting course had a lot of components—learning about the history of radio, learning how to work with editing software, producing promos and stuff, and most importantly, creating and producing a weekly radio show for the student station.
“And keep in mind, a lot of these skills will be transferrable to podcasting,” the teacher, Mr. Tucker, told us that first afternoon of class. He was a youngish guy with a beard and thick locks that he pulled back with a headband. “If you happen to be, uh, somewhat more interested in that medium.” He went through the syllabus with us and gave a brief intro presentation. In the last part of class, we would need to divide up into groups of four for our radio shows.
“I’m good with however you guys want to do it, but you’re going to spend a lot of time with your group over the course of the semester, so choose … mindfully, that’s how I’ll put it. Maybe your friend is here, but maybe working closely with them is going to drive you up the wall or get in the way of your productivity. Definitely keep that in mind.”
The thing about Meridian North was that it was so massive, you could definitely get put in a class without any of your friends whatsoever. I knew some of the people here for sure. There was this girl Sammy—we had French together sophomore year—and her boyfriend who played on the soccer (baseball?) team. A kid named Fletcher who I knew from when I disastrously tried debate club in ninth grade (Prompt: “Does technology make us more alone?” Me: “Uhhh … I mean, yeah? But if you think about it … no?”). But there was no one I was an instant lock with, unlike the group of girls turning to each other at the front of the room or Sammy immediately grabbing her boyfriend’s arm.
The girl sitting in front of me turned around. She had deep brown skin, tight curls cut short, and extra long legs stretched out into the aisle. I realized that I knew her—she was in the team sports class I took junior year. Her name was Sasha, and she played on the volleyball team. She had picked me for one of our class matches once even though my volleyball skills were about on par with my debate skills.
So maybe we weren’t exactly friends, but we were friendly at least. “Want to be in a group?” she asked.
I shrugged like I wasn’t supremely grateful to her for initiating, like I wasn’t just sitting there hoping someone would. “Sure.”
“We need two more.”
We scanned the room, but groups of four were rapidly materializing.
“Uh, maybe…” Sasha began, but then a guy sidled up to us from the back. He was wearing a T-shirt with giant neon letters that said “GREATEST OF ALL TIME” on it, but in weird typography, stacked up into a column in chunks like GREA/TEST/OF/ALL/TIME.
“Grea test of all time?” Sasha read as the guy opened his mouth to address us.
He looked caught off guard. “No, it says—”
“What kind of test is that?” I asked, because I couldn’t help it. “Like a diagnostic kind of thing?”
“All right, how are we doing?” Mr. Tucker called. “All grouped up?”
GREA/TEST/OF/ALL/TIME looked back at us, hesitating like maybe he had changed his mind, but then he plowed ahead. “Group? Us three?”
“Sure,” Sasha replied, glancing at me. I nodded.
“Cool,” the guy said, but a bit flat like it really wasn’t cool, like maybe he didn’t want to partner with people who pretended not to understand his T-shirt. “He’s with us too.” He gestured toward the back of the room, and a few rows behind us, Jamie Russell—wearing the same red-and-white-striped sweater he had worn on Christmas—gave us a little wave.
There seemed to be no way out of it.
“Works for me,” Sasha said, and I echoed it weakly:
“Yeah. Great.”
The Greatest of All Time was named Joydeep Mitra. He gestured Sasha and me to where Jamie was sitting in the back. As we followed him, he looked up at Sasha appraisingly.
“You’re really tall.”
“Thanks, I hadn’t noticed.”
“No, but for real. Is the atmosphere, like, different up there?”
Sasha’s expression was unwaveringly placid. “I don’t know, what’s the gravity like down there?”
A smile flickered across his face, but he didn’t respond, just plopped down at the desk next to Jamie’s.
“You guys know Jamie?” Joydeep said, and I nodded. Jamie nodded back, but not without a flash of that same kind of embarrassment he had worn on Christmas. I told Gram we shouldn’t bother you guys …
Sasha greeted Jamie too, and then we were a group, I guess, officially. Mr. Tucker told us we needed to brainstorm the concept for our show—we would have a proposal due at the end of the week, and then we’d get our time slot. Once we officially started broadcasting, we would be on the hook for one show a week for most of the semester.
“The live broadcasts are a large portion of your final grade,” Mr. Tucker told us after everyone had rearranged into their groups. “Since I obviously can’t listen live to every single time slot, you’ll be responsible for archiving each show as an audio file. Think of these audio files as assignments—failing to archive means a zero for that assignment for the whole group. No exceptions.” He leaned on his desk, his pants riding up on one leg to reveal socks that were a shock of neon stripes. “I want you to be creative with your concepts. And I want you to have fun. And”—he smiled—“to make it a little more interesting, we’re going to have bonus points for the group that has the highest average listenership at the end of the semester.”
When we were turned loose for brainstorming, Joydeep said with no preamble, “Who here is just so fucking psyched about radio? Anyone? No one? Good. Because my brother Vikrant took this class three years ago, and he told me the secret.”
“There’s a secret?” Jamie said.
“Of course there is. There’s a secret to everything.”
“Okay,” I said. “What is it?”
“Are you ready?”
I looked at Sasha, who just raised an eyebrow skeptically. “Pretty ready?”
Joydeep held his hands up like he was framing it in the air: “The nineties.”
“What about them?”
“That’s our theme.”
“But why?”
“The station’s catalog is full of nineties music. The school doesn’t have access to a lot of the current stuff, but they do have permission for a shit-ton of stuff from the nineties. So if you pick the nineties as the theme for your show, you have a ton of music to choose from. All you gotta do is queue it up and do a few breaks where you say what the songs are, and that’s it. Coast on by for the rest of the semester.”
Jamie was frowning. “What do you mean by nineties though?”
Joydeep frowned back. “Music that was released between the years 1990 and 1999?”
“No, I just mean—that could be anything. Gin Blossoms or Boyz II Men or Chumbawamba or Nirvana or Biggie—”
“That’s a lot of dudes on your list,” Sasha said.
“Britney Spears or Aaliyah or Celine Dion or Lauryn Hill,” Jamie amended.
Joydeep frowned. “What the fuck, did you study nineties artists?”