Our Story
Chapter 1: First Impression
It was their sophomore year at Bethel when Janelle and Matt shared their first class together. Picture this: It is 8:05am and Janelle is sitting in Discrete Math class diligently listening to the lecture and taking notes. Meanwhile, Matt is still sitting on the couch in his dorm room, finishing the assignment that is due at the end of class in exactly 45 minutes. While Janelle is raising her hand to ask Dr. Gossett a clarifying question about pumping lemmas, Matt is copying down the last answer off his graphing calculator and throwing on his shoes to run to the 4th floor classroom in the CC building. At precisely 8:37am, Janelle is distracted by a movement at the door. She watches as Matt slips in and slumps into the nearest desk to catch his breath. "He is so rude to walk in late every day," she thinks. "He'll probably still get an A." Needless to say, she didn't have much of a desire to get to know him.
Skip ahead to the end of their senior year. The day was swelteringly hot and both Janelle and Matt had just graduated. They had spent the year living on the same floor in Heritage Hall, but all that Matt knew of Janelle was that she was "one of those people who work in Math Lab." While they were moving their belongings out of the dorm, Matt and Janelle both found themselves in the 4th floor dorm lobby, waiting for the down elevator. After acknowledging each other and offering the obligatory, "Goodbye, have a good summer," they hugged and were about to part ways. Janelle's sister, Minda, was helping her move and suggested that she get a picture of the two of them. Janelle's initial thought was, "I'm all sweaty. I don't want anyone to touch me right now." But they finally obliged, and the following picture was the result:
