Sapphire returns to her normal routine: locate and kill pathogens—she's making good progress on measles—let people at STAR Labs ask her ring technical questions (which they are very excited about), and get ready for school. Time passes.

Next week, she starts class at Columbia University. Ordinarily, one would have trouble getting admitted on such short notice, or transferring credits from 'I went to college in an alternate universe, I promise', but she mentioned these problems to Batman. A week later, she got a letter informing her she had been admitted and would be able to take placement tests to skip the classes she's already taken. How did Batman accomplish this? Who knows, but there's got to be a reason everyone is scared of him.

Junior year classes aren't focused on the part of psychology she's most interested in but she manages to mix a therapeutic focused class in with the mostly experimental psych load. She doesn't ask questions about what strings Batman pulled.

She found a tasteful pair of rainbow patterned gloves with exposed fingertips that hide the glow of her ring and don't obviously bulge to wear when she's trying to be incognito.

Fortunately, she planned ahead so she's living within walking distance of campus and she walks instead of using the ring to get to go to her first class on experimental methodology. The school was kind enough to mail her the welcome packet and her ID as a transfer student.

By the time she gets to class, there are a few empty seats left. One of them is next to a long-haired guy who looks vaguely expectant.

She walks over. "Is this seat taken?" She asks quietly.

"Evidently not. Unless you're taking it."

She stops herself from rolling her eyes. "It just looked like maybe you were waiting for someone." She sits down.

"It would seem that I was waiting for you."

She smiles, that was a little nicer than his first comment. "I'll introduce myself then. Sapphire Eyestone."

"My name's Sid. Pleased to meet you."

Oh good he isn't 100% snark by volume. "Nice to meet you too."

Class begins. It's fairly typical for the first day of a college course: this is what the class is about, this is the syllabus, this is how it's going to work, here's an introductory lecture.

Sid sporadically takes notes in a small, pocket-sized notebook. He looks faintly bored.

That makes sense this kind of thing is boring.

Class comes to an end and people start leaving. Sid hasn't identified anything else interesting around here, so if he's onto anything at all, it's probably her.

"Hey, Sapphire, what do you think is the most important thing in life?"

"Other people. They're what makes life meaningful and what keeps it interesting."

That's not the way he was expecting her to frame the question. Teaches him to have expectations.

"There are a lot of other people. Do you think any are more or less important? Or are there circumstances under which other people are more or less important?"

"That's a hard question. It's always easier to care about the people in front of you or who you know personally but I don't know if that makes them more important in any real sense. And when people are fighting with each other it's hard to really show concern for them both without it seeming fake. There's also only so much time in the day. I do think I see people who are actively hurting others as less important and that plays out in my actions. I wish I understood why people do it though. I feel like understanding is always the first step to showing people a better path."

"That why you're a psychology major?"

They start walking outside.

"It is, why wouldn't I want to study the discipline that's all about understanding people?"

"Because it's about understanding people in a very specific, and rather limited way. Because it focuses mainly on studying what can be measured, which at best is a rather narrow domain, and at worst causes researchers to force a difficult-to-measure reality into tidy, but misleading, metrics. Because psychology as a discipline is very far from properly understanding the human psyche, and what it does know might not do you much good."

"I don't know, I'm skeptical about the value of the whole thing. And when I want to understand people I usually just talk to them."

"I think that's mostly a critique of experimental psych. I got into this in hopes of being a therapist. I think that side of the field has less problems. As for how valuable the insights are, I think I've gotten at least as much from talking to classmates as in the actual curriculum but that's still an opportunity I wouldn't have had."

"Mm, therapy. I'm skeptical about that too, but your point is taken."

"I think a lot of the value people get out of college is being close to other people learning the same things as you. It's funny, they charge everyone so much money to be in the same place as each other."

"I think my understanding of therapy is that it's about safety. Your therapist is someone who you can rely on not to judge you and so you can feel safe showing them the parts of you that you hide from everyone else."

She sighs, "Maybe if the world was better people would feel safe enough to not need therapy for that."

She shakes her head and chuckles. "As for charging people for the privilege of being in the same space, I think that's true. The other major piece is really charging for prestige and credentials. For a piece of paper saying that some respected institution thinks you're competent."

"Oh, god forbid some respected institution think I'm competent."

She giggles, "I don't know you well enough to comment."

"It's sort of like... I want to be good at the things I care about, in a real way, and not in the fake way that, uh, respected institutions find legible. And I don't feel like making an effort to make myself legible when I don't have to."