Chapter 250

Jameson watched as all the professors immediately accepted Shermaine’s invitation and walked off with her. His expression grew complicated as curiosity started eating at him. ‘Why are these professors so enthusiastic and respectful when they talk to Shermaine?’ he wondered.

‘What’s so special about Shermaine that deserves respect?’ Jameson thought. ‘Did she actually do something that impressive?’

Jason had been busting his ass trying to improve himself, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to get ahead of Shermaine. It was driving him crazy.

While he was lost in thought, Natalie noticed his expression and quickly jumped in to distract him. “Jarnie, we should grab lunch too. Jason said he was hungry earlier, so let’s get going.”

Her interruption worked. Jameson was still curious, but he didn’t dig any deeper into it.

Since Shermaine was with a group of professors, the question was where they would have lunch. They ended up eating at a private restaurant near the campus instead.

“Shermaine, with your abilities, coming to Basterel University for undergrad seems like overkill,” Yoel from the chemistry department said. “Honestly, we don’t have much to teach you. If anything, you should be teaching our students.”

He couldn’t help but think, ‘I mean, why would someone at her level need us to teach her anything?”

“Yeah, I wish you could just graduate right now and come do research with us,” another professor chimed in.

“Our physics lab at Basterel University is always open for you to visit whenever you want.”

“Hey, back off! Shermaine’s in our chemistry department. Quit trying to steal her from us!”

Shermaine gave them a modest explanation. “I just want to get a domestic master’s degree certificate, that’s all.”

The way she said it made it sound like she’d already been to college before and probably already had a master’s degree–maybe even more than that. The chemistry professor kept going. “That’s easy enough. You can work with me on the lithium battery project, and once we get some research results, I can apply for your master’s degree with the school right away.”

Hell, he’d apply for a doctorate too if needed. Then, he added, “Speaking of which, this is actually a project your fiancé is funding.”

Joshua stayed quiet, keeping his expression neutral. He had so many investment projects going at Basterel University that it was hard to keep track. Lithium batteries were definitely one of them.

The thing was, they’d been working on this battery project since last year, and they still hadn’t solved some major technical issues.

Yoel was really stressing out about it. The funding had gone out, but they weren’t seeing any results yet, and he felt like he was letting Joshua down big time.

Joshua wasn’t sweating it though. He was happy to keep funding the research since money wasn’t exactly tight for him.

Shermaine didn’t want to waste too much time on just getting a master’s degree, but since she was already at Basterel University and all these professors wanted her help, she figured she might as well stick around for a while.

She thought it over for a second. “I’ll consider the lithium battery project,” she smiled slightly. “If any of the other professors have problems they need help with, they can reach out to me too. I’ll be hanging around Basterel University for a while.”

Yoel let out a sigh of relief, “Great, let’s exchange numbers so we can stay in touch.”

“Sounds good.”

Just like that, Shermaine’s phone filled up with professor numbers and social media contacts.

After lunch, the professors started heading out one by one.

Next up was two weeks of orientation. The upperclassmen from Basterel University Department of Defense would be putting all the freshmen through their paces.

When Shermaine showed up, she realized she’d forgotten to pack some essentials–sunscreen, toiletries, stuff like that. She’d have to buy everything new. So after lunch, she and Joshua headed to the supermarket to stock up.

What Shermaine didn’t know was that she’d caused another huge stir on the Basterel University forums that day. Students were going crazy talking about her all over again.

Shermaine already had some name recognition at Basterel. She could thank Wendelyn for that mess.

The people who’d originally sided with Wendelyn knew Shermaine wasn’t actually the awful country bumpkin everyone made her out to be, and she definitely wasn’t some bully who threw her weight around.

But none of them had any clue that Shermaine was this year’s top scorer in sciences, with grades so incredible that professors were literally fighting over her on day one.

Then, someone who knew the real story spilled the tea. It turned out Shermaine was the mystery genius who showed up at this year’s International Technology Conference. Her SAT scores were nothing compared to what she pulled off there.

Shermaine absolutely killed it in every field imaginable and made everyone from the Republic of Wallington’s tech scene look amazing. It wasn’t just domestic professors trying to recruit her, universities abroad were going nuts over her too.