Defriese University

Defriese University is Auden’s planned college and a powerful marker of the academic future she expects to enter in the fall. The university is not depicted through a campus or classroom scene; instead, it takes shape through Auden’s expectations, preparation, and habit of measuring the present against the education still ahead of her.

Reputation and Expectation

At Ray’s, a woman reads Defriese University’s name and calls it a pretty good school. Auden agrees that it is one of the best. Asked whether she thinks she will get in, she nods and says yes. The exchange briefly exposes the confidence other people see in her, but Auden privately distinguishes that confidence from her own understanding of herself: she is not sure of success so much as accustomed to working hard for it.

That distinction connects Defriese to a broader academic world in which grades, papers, class rank, early admission, and weighted GPAs matter. Auden has spent her life within that world. Even at Ray’s, a place that represents a different set of priorities, she cannot readily leave its measures behind. Defriese therefore signifies more than a school she hopes to attend: it is the next stage of a life organized around academic achievement.

Preparing for the Fall

As summer begins, Auden realizes that she had concentrated on her last year of high school and the beginning of college without considering the stretch of time between them. She spends several weeks getting what she needs for Defriese and tries to pick up tutoring shifts at Huntsinger Test Prep, where business is slow. While old friends from Perkins Day invite her to dinner or trips to the lake, their conversations about summer jobs and boyfriends feel distant from the academic life she has come to inhabit. After several awkward outings, she begins declining invitations.

Her preparation is concrete and deliberate. Earlier in the summer, she finds syllabi for a couple of courses she will take at Defriese in the fall and tracks down some of the assigned texts at the U bookstore. She brings those books with her when she packs for Colby, along with a small duffel of clothes and her laptop. Even as she leaves for a change of scenery, she carries the coursework that connects her to the future she has planned.

The Summer Before College

Auden’s decision to go to Colby changes the course of her summer, but Defriese remains part of the way she imagines the months ahead. She has already considered the beach and time with Heidi unappealing, and the books she packs make visible her expectation that there will be little to do beyond those activities. The preparations suggest that she approaches the interval before college as something to fill or get through, rather than as a life with its own possibilities.

The narrative uses Defriese as an offstage destination against which Auden’s summer experience can be measured. Her certainty that she will attend and her advance study show how thoroughly she has oriented herself toward what comes next. At the same time, her awkward reunions with old friends and her inability to stop thinking about school reveal the cost of that orientation: the future feels legible, while the unstructured present is harder for her to inhabit.