Addition to standard disclaimer: "Sexual Behavior and the Human Condition" and Professor Jake Macklin are shamelessly stolen from the short-lived WB series "The Bedford Diaries." All diary topics are taken from each episode of the show, and are not the product of my imagination. All I did was take Rory Gilmore (who also does not belong to me) and have her use the ideas from "The Bedford Diaries."

Author's notes: A great big thanks to the best beta in the world, fulfilled. She kept me going when I was so discouraged I was ready to scrap this whole project.

Also, this is what I call a "quasi-crossover" – it takes ideas from the show "The Bedford Diaries" and mentions one character one time, but that's as far as it goes. The characters from BD and GG do not meet.

Sexual Behavior and the Human Condition
Prologue

"Okay...Philosophy, Anthropology, Calculus, Political Science, English Literature, French, and German. Now for Tuesday..."

Rory laughs along with the television as she watches Carol Seaver pick out college classes. She remembers the excitement and thrill of those first weeks at Yale and picking, any and all classes to try — she had probably tried out thirty classes finally settling on the five that she had decided worked the best. She remembered raving to her mother about "shopping week" and gleefully recounting the details of each prospective class Her first semester, Rory had taken a few mandatory prerequisites, including College English, which had been her favorite class that semester. The "textbook," a book of short stories that they had discussed and dissected endlessly in class, stands in a prominent spot in her bookshelf and she still likes to pick it up and read from it occasionally. There was even an Astronomy class she had briefly considered taking, but it never ended up fitting into her schedule.

She abandons the TV for the computer, leaving the set on for background noise. Since Logan left two weeks ago, Rory's taken to leaving lights on all over the place, especially at night, and more often than not, both the radio and the television are left on to try and fill the silence. She doesn't really hear either one, but with everything on, the apartment doesn't seem quite so empty. Still, though, all the white noise in the world doesn't replace actually being with someone.

Colin and Finn are frequent visitors at the apartment, making themselves at home, and Rory is grateful for their company, but there's a glaring absence from the group. She can't bring herself to go to most pub nights with the guys and Juliet and Rosemary — she feels too much like a fifth wheel and it brings back too many nights spent there when she and the other girls would roll their eyes affectionately at the boys' drunken ramblings. Honor calls regularly, coaxing Rory out of the apartment for the occasional day of facials and mani-pedis. They share stories back and forth, and it's good to be with someone who misses him, too.

She re-reads every book she wanted to, but never had time for in the past. She watches all her favorite movies, but it loses something when there's not someone there to laugh or mock with. It's still not enough — Rory never knew that the days (and especially the nights) could be this long.

The summer months loom ahead of her. Even though she's taking a few classes during summer session, still trying to make up for the lost semester, it won't be as much of a distraction as she wants. Once the fall semester starts, Rory knows, she'll be much busier with a full load of classes and stuff for the paper. She'll have less time to feel lonely – not only will she have more responsibilities to fill her time, but there will be more people around to distract her.

After she finishes dashing off a quick email, arranging a lunch date to discuss the latest travesty in the life of Paris Gellar, she confirms her shopping plans with Honor, and then calls Lane, chatting for a few minutes until Lane's husband (her husband!) needs her. Turning back to the computer, Rory's fingers unconsciously go to her mouth and she chews on her nails while she checks on a few of her regular sites, The New York Times, The Hartford Courant, and Bad news, bad news, and more bad news! The world is going to hell in a handbasket, she thinks, then giggles at how much she sounds like her grandfather.

Rory prints out three copies of her daily schedule for when classes begin. Looking over it, she nods with approval. Not does she have down when her three classes are, but it also includes lunch, coffee breaks, and study time. She sticks one up on the fridge with a magnet, tucks one into her purse, and slips the other into her bag — a backup copy.

She finishes checking a few other sites but since she has time to kill before she has to meet with a professor, she starts browsing the catalogs for other schools. Paris has done this, telling Rory in detail about all the courses that Yale doesn't offer. Rory often checks on other schools' newspapers, to get ideas for the Daily News (and sometimes, ideas on what not to do), but today is the first time she's perusing other colleges' catalogs. Purposely, she stays away from all journalism classes — the point of this is to see what else is out there. A lot of schools have similar Gen-Ed classes, she notices, and chuckles lightly at the redundancy of every college's catalog. I guess it really doesn't really matter, as far as academics go, which school you choose, shethinks to herself and shrugs Browsing through Yale's catalog, she notes some of the stranger electives. Bowling – as a class! she marvels.

Going back to the other schools, Rory decides to search for even more unusual electives. There have to be some classics out there — and she finds an abundance of them. There are classes she never would have even thought existed — topics that make no sense to be actual college courses, along with topics she never even heard of! Briefly, she wonders what sort of major some of these classes would count for — and thinks that all of these together would make one crazy major.

She comes across an Archaeology seminar called "Dig We Must!" in Utah. It's interesting, she thinks, but completely not her style. One of the Boston colleges offers a class on Disney literature , and Rory's certain that she and Lorelai would be the top students in that class. University of Illinois has one on German fairy tales, which she briefly considers checking out, then decides that she really doesn't have that much of an interest in the Brothers Grimm anymore. In California, there's a class that offers a feminist perspective on Hitchcock . Cool! Rory thinks. She makes a mental note to watch all of Hitchock's movies again, and try to examine them as a feminist. Out in Ohio, there's a seminar that's called History of Rock & Roll , and Rory knows Lane would love that class, and she sends her the link to check out.

Twenty minutes of browsing later, a seminar at Bedford University catches Rory's eye. Sexual Behavior and the Human Condition, taught by a Professor Jake Macklin. She laughs out loud at the title, thinking it's right up Finn's alley. A class on sex? That'd be one way to guarantee he attend. She clicks on the link to bring up the syllabus so she can tell him more about it and to her surprise, it actually sounds interesting. The point of the class, she reads, is to explore who you are sexually and how it relates to who you are as a human being. Sex, according to Professor Macklin, is G0d's greatest gift and G0d's greatest curse. Flipping to the class schedule, Rory becomes more and more intrigued by the topics. Sexual responsibility, keeping secrets, risk, abstinence — the list goes on. She notes that the students in the seminar will record video diaries every week on the topic discussed in class.

Rory glances at the clock and she's glad to see she still has five minutes before she has to leave. It takes ten minutes to walk to campus (though she always allows fifteen) and she's completely ready, all she has to do is grab her purse and walk out the door. Five minutes after she was supposed to leave, she's still hovered over the keyboard, reading the individual class descriptions. One more look at the clock tells Rory she now only has five minutes to get to her advisor's office, and she dashes out the door leaving the page up on the computer.

When Rory returns to the apartment three hours later after a meeting with a professor and a detour to the library, she's still mulling over the topics of the Bedford seminar. The more she thinks about it, the more interesting she finds it. She starts thinking that it might be a fun thing to do if she made her own journal, even if she can't actually take the class. It'd be a good way to fill the time, a new routine to start, and she might even benefit from it — discover something new.

She rummages through the desk drawers, finally surfacing with her treasure — an undersized notebook with a fancy blue cover that she had bought at a dollar store on a whim. Smoothing out the front page, she writes the title, and lists the topics below.

Author's notes, part 2: This is just where I give credit to the wonderful people on the G2M2 (a.k.a. GGMM, or the Gilmore Girls Meet Market on TWoP) who gave me suggestions on interesting electives. The colleges that I depicted these electives coming from are just completely random – the classes are not really from those colleges. So, "Dig We Must" is from TAPhD, the class on Disney literature is courtesy of Summer InA Bowl, the one on German fairy tales is from Polter-Cow, and the feminist perspective on Hitchcock is thanks to annabelleonyx. So thanks, all of you for contributing!