I got out of bed and went over to the little executive table that’s in all hotel rooms, even the ones that are definitely not for executives. I flicked on the table light and opened my computer. The interview would require selling the administrators on my vision for online journalism, at a time when advertising dollars were evaporating and newspapers were shutting down. I had no experience thinking about the Internet or business plans, since I had frittered away my time in college on a political-science degree I never really used.

I opened up a Word document and began googling new-media-thinker blogs, websites about coding, and excerpts from books by popular “journalism 2.0” luminaries. I started to notice patterns in the buzzwords and arguments the journalism futurists used. None of them seemed to know what they were talking about, but they all talked in the same way, and that seemed good enough to get them branded “thinkfluencers.” And it would have to be good enough for me.

By the time our alarm clock sounded that morning, I was still maniacally googling and muttering things like “platisher” every few minutes. Kelly glanced over at me and shook her head in dismay.

We got dressed and went to USC’s campus, which looks like it was designed to play the role of “college” in a teen movie. (In fact, it has, many times.) The grounds were perfectly maintained. Students sped between the dusk-colored buildings on beach bicycles. I half expected a kid to lead the marching band in a rendition of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.”

Also, there were fountains. Everywhere.

“Jesus Christ, what’s with all the fountains?” Kelly said, narrowly avoiding stepping in one.

“Yeah, this seems…expensive,” I said hesitantly.

“Olga, out of curiosity,” Kelly said, “let’s say you don’t get this money, how much is this going to cost you?”

“Mm, like fifty grand a year.”

Kelly bit her fist.

“Holy shit, Olga,” she said. “Holy shit. That’s a lot. You better get that scholarship, is all I’m saying. You don’t have that kinda money.”

Somehow, that fact had not escaped me.

The interviews were structured like a video game, where you do easy rounds with lower-level professors before meeting the Big Boss, the director of the journalism school. In the morning, all of us scholarship contestants were brought into a softly lit conference room for a brief USC propaganda talk. I surveyed the competition. One guy was a laid-off investment banker. One girl was fresh out of college.

“Which college?” I asked.

“Harvard,” she said.

I wondered how much practice it must have taken to say that word in a way that sounded neither embarrassed nor haughty.

The USC professors told us to help ourselves to coffee from the Keurig machine. “A Keurig machine!” I said to one of my rivals. “This school really is expensive.”