Leala in U.T. Wonderland
Written by Leala Ansari in the style of Lewis Carroll
Leala was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her two friends by the swimming pool and having nothing to do. Once or twice she had peeped into the Cosmo that Elizabeth, her friend, was reading, but it was too far away for her to make out any of the words. “What was the use anyway,” Leala thought, “If Lizzy would just get mad at me reading over her shoulder?”
So, she glanced at Kristen, her very best friend, and saw that she was doing her best to stuff her last college application into an envelope. Leala was going to go to college too. She was thinking about which college to go to; only the very biggest and smartest would do for someone as smart as she was, of course. Leala was reflecting on her university choices when a big, orange, Longhorn wearing a tutu ran towards her, pirouetted, and then ran right by.
Since this kind of thing happened at least once or twice a day, Leala did not find this so very extraordinary; nor did she “think it so very much out of the way to hear the” Longhorn say to himself (and probably anyone who was listening) “Hook ‘em, Horns!”[2]. But, when the Longhorn paused mid-plié and took a football out of his front tutu pocket, Leala jumped to her feet, for she had never seen a longhorn have a football, much less a tutu pocket to take a football out of. Astounded, she pliéd after the longhorn only to see him bound into a small, white, concrete hot tub.
Right on his heels, Leala went down into the hot tub, never doubting that a twirling cow would be much more interesting than her friends.
Down she went, falling. “Either the [hot tub] was very deep, or she fell very slowly,” because she fell for what seemed like twelve straight hours. Leala wondered what was about to happen, never questioning why there wasn’t a bottom to the hot tub in the first place. Since they were falling down and not up, Leala thought that the hole should get darker as she went; the hole did not get darker at all, she noticed, because the walls of the hole were painted white, except for the elevators, which were painted green. A sign in between two of the elevators said “CASTILIAN DORMITORY.”
All of a sudden, the hole swirled and stretched into points, and curves became edges, four to be exact, and Leala registered all of this swirling and stretching with wonderful composure. The square-hole was not finished growing; it swelled wider and taller (a bit wider than taller) until Leala felt no bigger than a pea rolling around inside a watermelon. “I guess floating would be a better word,” Leala thought aloud, “because I am still falling, but I am sinking very slowly”.
In that instant, the white walls of the Castilian formed windows, and walls, and doors, and Leala soon realized she was falling down the middle of a building. She twisted to look underneath her, but saw only shadows. Then, she turned back around to look up again, into the heart of the Castilian’s symmetrical structure. One floor was stacked right on top of the other, and she noticed that each floor had the same number of brown wooden doors (which were also stacked up right on top of the other). There was nothing else to do in the situation but get dizzy, so Leala did. She rather thought that the stacked floors “looked like two mirrors facing each other so that their reflections were each reflected in the others face a million times, or maybe a billion” (Leala wasn’t sure; she had not the slightest idea how much a million or a billion was).
Tired of falling down, down, down, Leala began to think about how to stop. She thought of a brilliant idea, and grabbed a doorknob, on the way down, down, down, and pulled herself inside.
Behind the door, at least thirty young men and ladies milled about, carrying schoolbooks; they were all older than Leala by at least two years. She turned around to see the Orange Longhorn sitting behind an old teal colored desk. “Welcome to the Castilian,” said the Orange Longhorn, “I hope you don’t miss high school, because you are about to learn what it means to bleed orange!”
Next to the Orange Longhorn was…
[4]…
a bowl of tortilla chips with a paper label with the words “EAT ME” embossed
fantastically on it in large letters.
Now, Leala was very upset, for she wanted to eat a tortilla chip, and not the label at all, fantastic as it was. Afraid that the college students would think her silly or stupid, Leala ate a tortilla chip instead.
“What a weird feeling,” thought Leala. “I feel like I am trying to walk on the outside of a spaceship, without my gravity boots!” This is to say that Leala felt weightless, floating neither up nor down, just…around.
As it turns out, Leala had floated around–right to the other side of the desk where the Orange Longhorn had just stood. She was the same size, and looked the same, as far as she could tell, but her clothes were different. Leala was mostly concerned because the clothes that she was wearing were not hers, and there was likely someone running around wearing no clothes. She looked at the bright gold nametag on her shirt. It read: Leala Ansari, The Castilian. She worked here?
“I work here?” Leala questioned. “I must be trying to work to help Mamma and Daddy pay for college.” She worked for what she thought was one day, but was really a whole summer, answering phones and helping people and being a Resident Assistant, when all of a sudden, she felt like she had to use the restroom. Leala walked down the hallway making a quick click-clackety sound on the tile before she opened the door marked “WOMEN.”
As Leala was walking into the restroom, she saw a little, tiny dress on the floor. “Why, it’s a cheerleading outfit!” Leala said with a giggle.
[6] She laughed, but secretly, Leala
wanted to wear the outfit more than anything. Unfortunately, it was too small.
Next to the costume, there was a miniature little glass that had the face of
the Orange Longhorn painted on it. 
[7] Smartly, Leala
assumed that she was to drink whatever was in the glass in order to be able to
fit into the cheerleading uniform. “Well, it smells kind of strange, but there
is not a tag anywhere that says it is poison, so I guess I will drink it!” said
clever, clever Leala.
“OW,OW, Ow, ow, ow,” yelped Leala, after downing the mysterious drink in one big gulp (it was still burning down her throat). She had swallowed that awful drink and nothing had even happened! There was no way that she could fit into the uniform…but just then, Leala’s head stopped spinning, or maybe the room did, because she saw quite clearly then that she could fit into the cheerleading uniform. And so she put it on and…slid down into a trap door in the tile floor to another place altogether.
“This is getting crazier and crazier,” whispered Leala. She was in a lecture hall in a college classroom, on the first day of school, or maybe the second. She looked at all of the two hundred or more students who were in the classroom with her and thought she was probably the youngest one there. Feeling small and inexperienced next to all of the other students, Leala began to cry. Then Leala realized that, as if being the dullest one in the room was not enough, she was also still wearing the cheerleading uniform that was still two sizes too small. She missed the simple life she lived at the Castilian. You see, at the Castilian, Leala knew what she was doing and where she was going at least most of the time. The people had liked her there, and she felt as lost leaving the Castilian to go to college as she had leaving home to go work at the Castilian. Her rain of tears became a flood, and poured out into the hall, soaking all of the students’ papers and effectively canceling class for the rest of the day.
Leala hurried out of the classroom into the puzzling halls of Robert A. Welch Hall looking for a way out of the building. This task was not so easy; for a simple building, Welch had so many twists and turns! Every door opened was just another classroom with two hundred to five hundred pairs of aggravated eyes glaring Leala’s way. It was so frustrating!! This was just one building, a big building, but just one building nonetheless. How was she ever going to navigate an entire campus if she couldn’t get herself out of one building? “If this is how college will be like,” Leala said to herself, “I would rather stay in high school for the rest of my life!”
Another thought struck her as she raced, frantically looking for an exit. Could the campus have more boring buildings? For a place that is supposed to help you learn, buildings like Welch did not do much to stimulate the mind and senses. In fact, Welch was just a big, dingy, brick box where three hundred trillion students were crammed into a single classroom. Leala wondered if the same guy who built prisons made Welch.
She remembered one field trip her English class had taken to the state capitol. Now there was an artistic building. The building’s design was exciting and the dome was stunning. She summoned up that moment when she and her classmates had laid their heads in a little circle on the cold floor of the capitol, and gazed up into the dome. At that moment, Leala had wanted her easel and acrylics just so she could paint the breathtaking scene above her. She had wondered why more artists did not paint domes from the underside, and then she realized that no two-dimensional canvas could ever capture the sight. From where she was resting her head, gazing up into the center of the dome, Leala thought that even the best use of perspective could not fully capture the sheer height of the it. It had seemed that a giant had come upon the capitol building and hollowed out the ceiling with an enormous ice cream scoop leaving only echoes to bounce around in the empty space.
The capitol’s dome was a pristine white, and it sat on top of many round stories that, from the floor, looked like concentric circles, except for the little hands and feet of children and the heads of their watchful parents poking over each floor’s railing. Evenly spaced lines ran from the bottom of the dome to meet at the peak of the dome where the star of Texas was proudly displayed. “Why couldn’t these buildings be like that,” Leala muttered under her breath. She thought that if she opened one more door that was no an exit, she would just die.
Leala turned around again to find a door that she had not noticed before on the left side of the hallway. She turned the knob and ran outside, fed up with classes, professors, other students, and getting lost in this awful U.T. Wonderland. Still running, she came to a large tower and collapsed, exhausted, at the foot of the tower steps. “You all right?” said a voice.
It was Ritalin Roommate, a fun, high energy girl who lived with Leala in her, their, room. “Oh Roomie!” cried Leala, “I feel so small and lost, and I want to be six years old again, cuddled against my Mamma.” It was funny, because as she sobbed and sniffed the sentence out, Leala seemed to grow smaller and smaller, until she was all but swimming in her cheer outfit.
“Stop, oh stop, stop, stop!” exclaimed Ritalin Roomie, “your crying is making you shrink!”
“Well, what do I do?!” stammered Leala, suddenly very aware of a drafty breeze running through the open spaces in the uniform.
“Pretend!
Pretend that you know what you are doing! Grab school spirit by the horns and
ride it until you are confident about being here at U.T.!” shouted Roomie,
encouragingly. With that thought, she handed Leala a pair of U.T. flip flops.
Leala wished
that a pair of sandals could make her have the same kind of self-confidence she
had in high school or at her job at the Castilian, where she held some
authority, but she highly doubted that they could. 
[10]
Leala
put on her makeshift glass slippers, though she thought the whole idea
ridiculous, and at that moment the longhorn appeared. With a wink and a nod of
his pointed horns, the Orange Longhorn lifted her astride his back (she had to
be careful of the tutu) and headed off past an odd carroty colored sign. 
[11]
With every arabesque and glissade (with every hop and slide) Leala’s tears slowed and her smile spread wider on her face. She was beginning to feel the spirit of the school. By the time the dancing duo had come to their destination, Leala had almost grown back into her cheerleading uniform. “Whatever are we doing here?” Leala began to ask of Bevo, which was apparently the name of the orange longhorn who had been her guide.
“You will see, Leala, just wait!” answered the longhorn even as he faded slowly away into nothing.
Bevo had dropped the smiling girl at the “very top” of the University of Texas stadium and by the “very top,” Leala meant the very top; Bevo had left her sitting right on top of the football stadium’s flood lights.
Somehow she didn’t find it too hot up there, or too bright. The lights were not on (it was daytime), and Leala found it very comfortable to sit and look from her perch. In fact, the day was lovely, fresh, and clean. Hardly a sound reached her ears from below as U.T. longhorn fans filtered into the stadium seats. It struck Leala as strange that from her seat, she could see the tops of almost every campus building within and beyond the forty acres that define the U.T. community. The Castilian was far enough away that it looked, Leala thought, to be just about her size, maybe a smidgen smaller. The campus landscape was a paint-by-number watercolor painted in tan, white, and green; all of the colors were muted by a thin white veil of atmosphere. For the first time since beginning college, Leala did not feel the least bit inferior to anyone or anything. She didn’t feel anxious or timid about fitting in at a big university. She belonged.
The air smelled different up here, Leala decided, sweeter, and untainted. She took in the air in short, quick breaths, as one is prone to do when so high up. The glinting metal stadium seats were almost covered in a blended wave of orange t-shirts, hats, and foam fingers. From where she was sitting the entire stadium, as big as it was, looked like a peculiarly wide, child’s collapsible cup.
Drops of rain dribbled from the sky, splashing Leala in the face with freezing water. Suddenly, she did not feel like being on top of the stadium anymore. Leala tried to wipe the rain off her face, but as soon as she would wipe away one drop of rain, two would take its place! The rain came down harder and harder until she felt like she was almost drowning in it! Leala gave a little scream and shut her eyes in fear.
When she opened them again, she was laying next to the pool, with her two friends faces hanging over her head, grinning. Each friend held an empty water bottle, the contents of which were still streaming off Leala’s face. Leala was not horribly upset, though, because as mischievous as her two friends were, they would never have the adventures that she did in the Castilian rabbit hole and U.T. Wonderland with Bevo.
[Fast Forward…]
It was precisely that dream that Leala remembered on her first day of college at the University of Texas at Austin and held with her every day thereafter. She kept dreaming the dream every so often throughout her time at college, and the dream evolved with her. The plot continued to get more and more convoluted as Leala’s studies got harder and harder. One night, after shutting down her computer and crawling in between her down comforter and her sheets, Leala dreamed.
She was in her second year now, a veritable hot shot. Leala’s consistent good grades confirmed what she had already known (of course that she was a very smart, brilliant, clever girl). She knew her way around the classroom, and she understood what it took to get a good grade in a class. So, Leala was piddling along through UT as if college-life was second nature to her. That is, until she decided to enroll in Jerome Bump’s nineteenth century literature class. Well, actually, the class was also about art and architecture, but Leala was sure that those subjects would be hardly talked about. “He will probably make me buy a lot of brand new books that we will use one quote from the entire semester,” Leala thought to herself. But she registered for it anyway.
The class material was pretty interesting and Leala was very, very glad that since she was in college now, she could use bigger words in her sentences! The other students in the class were nice enough, too, although they were all a bit off their rocker. Of course, the very first thing to do when attending a new class was to make everyone’s acquaintance. As she did that very thing, on the first day of class, Leala noticed something very strange about the classroom: whenever the students, and the professor, spoke their names, they came out backwards! For example, Brent’s name came out “Tnerb,” when he spoke it aloud. This was awfully strange to Leala, who figured herself among the few normal people in UT Wonderland. Imagine her surprise when she opened her mouth and “Leala” came out “Alael!” No other words came out backwards, just names. So, for the entirety of the semester, Leala answered to Alael.
The professor was a very likeable man with various hats, which he wore to class, during class, and one would suppose, after class as well. Leala wondered if he wore them in the shower too, but she would never ask. His most favorite, it seemed was a wheat-colored cowboy hat with a piece of paper stuck to it that read: “10/6”. The class secretly called him the Mad Hatter (which of course came out Dam Rettah). He wasn’t called “mad” simply for wearing his hats; the professor could only speak one word: Oxford. So, when he lectured, the poor mad sounded like “Oxford, Oxford, Oxford, Oxford, Oxford….” Somehow, the class understood what he was saying even if page after page of their notes were filled with “Oxford, Oxford, Oxford, Oxford, Oxford….”
Leala liked this class very much and would recommend it to anyone who cared to ask her opinion. Her classmates were very inventive and they came in all sizes. Leala was never sure if they came naturally that way, or if they had eaten something to make themselves the sizes they were. She thought surely Martin wasn’t really that tall or Jessie that short. In fact, she wasn’t altogether certain about anything in this classroom. The rules here were like nothing Leala had ever seen before in any of the classrooms she had ever been in. In this class, the students wrote journals, went on field trips, took virtual tours on the computers, and even meditated once in a while. Actually, the class was about to go outside to sit under a tree to meditate right now.
Leala clunked all of her books into her backpack and mentally cursed the professor for assigning reading from both of the course packets, which were both quite large and heavy. As the students settled down onto the grass outside, some in the sun and others in the shade, Leala found a spot at the very edge of the tree. When she sat down, leaf-shaped shadow puppets danced on her face; she closed her eyes. The next sounds she heard were…
“LEALA! Leala…Courtney, go wake her up. No, no don’t just shake her. Do something funny. Draw on her face, nothing permanent.” It was Professor Bump’s voice, and Leala recognized it right away, luckily before Courtney could reach her face with the blue marker she held in her hand. Dang it, she must have dozed off during another of Bump’s Oxford slide shows. This time he had caught her. “Oh boy,” Leala sighed, blowing out a breath, “here we go.” But, Professor Bump didn’t do anything to her, because he was a kind, forgiving, wonderful teacher.
Yeah, right!! Leala’s little napping incident earned her twelve weeks of shoveling longhorn, donkey, pig, dog, and deer manure at his ranch. Lesson learned.
Works Cited