Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s depiction of mental health and depression. 

Selin arrives back at Harvard after summer break. She is a sophomore and spent the summer teaching English in Hungary. She was encouraged to take on this volunteer work by fellow classmate Ivan (who has since graduated), with whom she had a confusing, year-long, half-romantic pseudo-relationship. The summer ended with what had felt like a breakup, though Selin isn’t sure if they were together in the first place. On returning to campus, she immediately checks her email to see if Ivan has messaged her. There is an email from him, but it is months old. Her friend Svetlana returns the next day and asks about Selin’s summer: She wants to know if Selin and Ivan “hooked up.” They did not.

Selin and Svetlana will be in an accelerated Russian class together, and they browse the course catalogue to look for additional classes. Selin is drawn to a literature course dedicated to novels about chance because Ivan is studying chance (albeit in mathematics). Though its required texts look mostly uninteresting, she is excited by one book: Either/Or by Soren Kierkegaard.