No Rubric

No Rubric — Track 46 The AMP Sessions: Class of '26 | UVA Systems Engineering I do not know what this song is. I started keeping notes a few months ago. Things that should have been coincidence. Three professors who all told us, separately, that there would be no rubric. A room arranged before we arrived and never rearranged. Room 237. The digits sum to twelve. We walked in at twelve. We walked out at ten. One of us had two strokes and stayed. Two children were born during the year. A book is still on our syllabus written by a man who died before we applied. I checked the dates twice. They kept arranging themselves. I do not believe in conspiracies. I am an engineer. I tried to write this off as pattern recognition gone bad — the same way faces appear in clouds, the same way gamblers see streaks. But I could not stop finding more. The arithmetic on the door. The teaching awards counted in twelves. The October that took the founder and almost took one of us a year later. The handwriting on the case file. I don't know if I am the investigator or the assignment. I don't know if this song is documenting the year or completing it. I don't know if I wrote it or if it was waiting for me. I am posting it here so it is no longer only in my notebook. --- From The AMP Sessions: Class of '26, an album about one cohort's year inside the University of Virginia's Accelerated Master's Program in Systems Engineering.