chapter756

Edna: "Go ahead, but if I'm gone, don't think you'll be having a picnic either!"

"Fine, I'll do it "

"Hertha, have you forgotten how you even got into grad school in the first place?" Hertha stopped in her tracks.

Edna chuckled, "You weren't gonna make it. If I hadn't pulled some strings for you, do you really think you'd be standing here today?"

"Sure, go ahead and report me. I'm not stopping you. If I'm going down, you're coming with me. If I get expelled, you, the fake grad student who bribed their way in, will be right there with me. Sounds fair, doesn't it?"

Hertha was shaking with anger, "You wicked old witch!"

"Wicked?" Edna snorted, "Takes one to know one."

Without those extra credit projects, Hertha's semester grades were a disaster.

She flunked three courses, and her other classes barely hit the C range.

Her grades were laughably bad.

Even Slater, that lapdog, did better than her!

Whenever Beverley asked about her GPA, Hertha hemmed and hawed until she couldn't keep the truth hidden any longer.

Beverley had a way of seeing everything through rose-colored glasses. In her eyes, her daughter was in grad school at Kingswell University, so naturally, she had to be excelling.

But then...

"Are you trying to give me a heart attack?!"

Hertha panicked and made up an excuse, "The finals were just really tough this time! A lot of people didn't do well, not just me."

"What about Roseanne?"

"Well? Speak up!"

"...All A's."

Beverley: "..."

Sybil Moore wasn't having the best time either.

First off, Edna was an absolute nightmare to deal with.

No matter how carefully Sybil treaded, she'd always end up getting scolded.

And she didn't dare cry about it.

Edna was her aunt, but she might as well have been a stranger.

Then there was the issue of her academic output-

The lab was under review, and she couldn't just claim Carlson's work as her own. Without a functioning ab, therewas no way she could O magically produce a paper

Besides, Carlson's projects were at a standstill, so there wasn't even any material to work with.

Thankfully, she had a few papers from before, so her grades were better than Hertha's.

But this wasn't sustainable. Without new papers, how was she supposed to keep up her "child prodigy" act?

She tried messaging Carlson, but he didn't even bother responding.

Several times she went to Edna to complain, only to get chewed out instead.

The school was on winter break now, but a lot of grad students stayed behind to work on their projects.

Everyone had a lab to go to, projects to work on, except them...

Staying behind with nothing to do felt like wandering the streets with nowhere to go.

Sybil once suggested to Edna that since the lab was still being revamped, they might as well send everyone home.

After all, twiddling their thumbs wasn't exactly productive.

Predictably, she got another earful: "Is that all you aspire to? If you wanted to go back to that small town, you shouldn't have come to Kingswell University in the first place! I gave you so many accolades, so many titles, taught you to fight for your place, and now you tell me you want to go home?!"

Sybil cried after that one.

What was so wrong about wanting to go home?! Was hanging around school

doing nothing really that much more promising?!

Of course, she only screamed these thoughts in her head, never daring to voice

them.

In the team, the one who seemed to have it easiest was Grace.

She wasn't like Hertha, desperately trying to squeeze into a research group; nor was she like Sybil, needing to constantly churn out academic work to uphold a facade of brilliance.