The hero of this story, Til Stendish, is an ordinary student living a miserable, reckless life. He made a promise to his grandmother before she died: he would pull himself together and finish college. But over time he began to forget about it—somehow moving from course to course, plunging deeper into the swamp of failures—until his fate started to hang on an invisible thread and slip away from him.
For Til, everything began quite well: parties, a bunch of friends and girlfriends. But then it all suddenly evaporated when the expulsion lists were posted—and afterward everything snowballed and fell on him like an avalanche…