It had the quality of something built rather than caught.

But that thought was small and far away under everything else, because everything else was collapsing.

My scholarship was frozen, effective immediately.

My job offer, the one I had worked four years for, was placed under review pending the outcome.

And the woman across the table told me, not unkindly, that if the allegations were sustained, expulsion was a possible result.

Four years, one semester from the finish line, and it was all suddenly hanging by a thread that someone I could not yet see was actively trying to cut.