Janie's Intrigue

Beginning of a back story

Janie was an average kid through high school. She enjoyed her art and science classes. The teachers would occasionally call on her to answer a question, but, other than that, she didn’t say much in class. It wasn’t like people didn’t know who she was in school, it was just that everyone else seemed focused on anyone else.

This wasn’t a bad thing for Janie, she was happy being alone. This allowed her mind to explore “what ifs” in life. Her thinking didn’t always go deep, but she had some ideas that she thought could be groundbreaking if developed by the right people. She just didn’t know the right people. Who does an average kid go to talk to about if the beginning of life on Earth was in more than one place or ways to improve health and wellness or how to create machines that can reach the smallest cells? One day Janie decided that Ms. Worton would be a good place to start. Ms. Worton was Janie’s 10th grade physical science teacher. Although Janie was in 12th grade now, she trusted Ms. Worton.

She had just started her senior year of high school, so Janie thought now was the time to start exploring her ideas with Ms Worton. The 3 pm meeting with Ms Worton was set for today, September 8th, and Janie was nervous. As confident as she was in her ideas, Janie still feared being rejected or dismissed. This was very personal.

Janie entered Ms. Worton’s classroom quietly so as to not disturb her. Ms. Worton was deep in papers on her desk from her classes that day and looked up as Janie was about 5 ft from her desk. She smiled at Janie which helped to calm Janie’s nerves.
“Hi, Janie. I’m glad to see you. What is this meeting for?” said Ms. Worton.
“Hey, Ms. Worton. I just had some stuff I wanted to talk about. Some ideas I have that I don’t know what to do with.” Janie rattled.
“That sounds interesting. Have a seat and tell me about those ideas.”
“Well, I’m worried they are crazy ideas and I’m worried that I don’t know who to share them with to see if they are crazy.”
“Try me! You can start with an idea that seems lighter and less worrisome and then we can go from there. How does that sound?”
“Okay!” Janie spoke quickly. Then she decided to start with her idea for ‘sun underground’. Although many schools had science fairs, hers didn’t, so she didn’t have an outlet for some of her most interesting science experiments.