“I need to print my layout later. This is getting ridiculous,” I muttered, juggling a sketch pad, my tablet, and a whole roll of illustration board. I looked like a walking art supply dump — sweaty, starving, and with what felt like dried ink on my cheek — and I was sprawled like roadkill in the hallway of the Fine Arts building.

“I told you, wear sleeves next time. Look at you — like you got splashed with gouache,” Mina, my classmate from FA 2A, said while holding an iced americano and taunting me with it like it was sin in a cup.

I glanced at the glass panel beside...