A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 12

This story idea is probably better as a sit-com: “Duke professor’s family lives on campus”:

Maeve Cook-Deegan will have plenty of new experiences when she heads off to college this fall. But dorm life won’t be one of them.

Maeve, a 17-year-old Durham Academy senior, has already spent six years living in a Duke University residence hall as the daughter of one of the university’s 13 faculty-in-residence professors.

Which means she’s already had a few “crazy college kids” moments.

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Exhibit A: “I walked out the door yesterday and there was a guy with his shirt off,” Maeve recounted recently. “And his friend was reading what people had written on him the day before.”

Such is life in Alspaugh dorm on Duke’s East Campus, Maeve’s home since she was 12. She lives there with her parents, Bob and Kathryn, and their dog, Oshie, a friendly mutt named for a Swiss lake.

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In exchange for free housing, utilities and wi-fi, Cook-Deegan is both a formal and informal adviser to the 120 students who live in Alspaugh. The formal: He helps organize dorm events, outings and educational activities, though he has no official disciplinary duties. The informal: He becomes a crisis counselor on occasion when an overstressed student bangs on the door in the middle of the night.

Okay, here’s a big A plot: One of the college students and the teenage daughter elope, heading off to Mexico to get married. The daughter’s parents and siblings join together with the fiance’s best friends (college students) to stop the wedding. Hijinks and mayhem ensue.

Apart from a big plot, it really does feel more like a sit-com.

How about you? Do you see another angle into a story given this idea?

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