This is a satirical article and is not meant to be taken seriously. It does not reflect the opinions of The Spectator or UW-Eau Claire.

Grace Herman is more prepared for the off-chance she meets Harry Styles, ex-One Direction-member, solo musical artist and Oscar-nominated film star, than she is to graduate college, sources report.

“If Harry Styles walked up to me on the street and asked if I wanted to go to a romantic candlelit dinner over locally-sourced salmon at The Lakely, I’d immediately call my boyfriend and dump him,” Herman was overheard saying last week while ordering half-off appetizers with her friends. “Assuming I had a boyfriend, that is.”

Herman’s best friend, Tara De La Croix said the fantasy has been growing increasingly elaborate over the past year or so.

“Ever since Grace went to see Dunkirk in theaters, the delusional fantasies have been growing in complexity and size,” De La Croix said. “Yesterday she mentioned taking a stroll along the Chippewa River as the setting sun glistens off his perfect cheekbones.”

Herman, who is set to graduate in May, said she has “a few” job applications out. Her career plans, she said, are up in the air.

“I don’t know,” she said while purchasing tickets one year in advance to Styles’ Chicago concert. “I mean, I’m kind of a take things as they go kind of gal. Go with the flow, and all that. Not too much of a planner, me.”

De La Croix said that last week while she and Herman were studying together at ECDC, Herman rambled on for upwards of 20 minutes about what she would say, what she would be wearing, and the life she would live if she were ever to run into Harry Styles.

“She has a couple of broader-scale plans,” De La Croix said. “The primary one is that she meets Harry while on a trip to Los Angeles, he falls in love at first sight, and she becomes the muse for his next six albums. The secondary one is that Harry somehow winds up in Eau Claire, possibly because of Eaux Claires, and she charms him with her quirky fashion, eclectic paperback collection, and love of bananas.”

De La Croix said she wasn’t sure whether Herman’s multi-leveled, convoluted dream included any traces of her linguistics major, or even a career at all.

Duncan Jensen, a second-year communications major who sits next to Herman in Biology 102, said she often scrolls through Tumblr on her laptop during lecture.

“Grace?” Jensen said, “Yeah, she has this really incredible way of making everything about Harry Styles. Did you know he’s been performing an unreleased song about being bisexual from his self-titled album while on tour in Europe? Because I didn’t until yesterday.”

Herman, who sources report has 16 Safari pages open to photos of Styles wearing various headscarves, said she’s “just not that much of an academic.”

“I’ve never been great at memorization,” Herman said while typing ‘Harry Styles glitter green peak lapel with floral print, custom Gucci suit November 6, 2017’ into her laptop search bar. “I don’t know. I guess I just never found my true passion in life.”

“Honestly, with a linguistics degree, the best I can hope for is a low-level office job somewhere in a suburb,” Herman said, while comparing a tweet and two photos of Harry with fans to determine the exact moment his flight left London for Los Angeles.

At the time of publication, Harry Styles could not be reached for comment.