kindergarten teacher. Thankfully, I’m wearing my favorite buckled slides, reliable yet saucy. They work anywhere.
The woman with the bright yellow crocs walks over to the lectern and clears her throat into the microphone. She wants to know if everyone has downloaded a course outline. Everyone in the room has their own laptop on the desk in front of them. No one told me to download a course outline or bring a laptop to class. The prof is giving us instructions on how to link to a website for information on something called restriction enzymes. Then she wants us to go to a departmental webpage that has a set of links to the labs we need to download.
Labs? Wait a minute. There’s something hinky going on here. Why does she keep talking about genomes and recombinant DNA technology? I take a peek at the laptop on the desk beside me. The heading on top of the screen says Course Outline: Cell and Molecular Biology.
I step on a few Crocs in my haste to exit.
As I enter the right lecture hall, in the next building, Professor Greshen looks up from his lectern. He glares at me with bulgy eyes, and pauses to remind the class that lateness is disrespectful and we should all try to be on time for lecture in the future.
All the seats are taken. Now I have to slouch at the back of the room and hang my head in shame with all the other rude latecomers.
At lunch, I review the course syllabus for my Modern American Poetry class. I’m required to attend one lecture plus one tutorial per week, and I have to read sixteen million poems, write two essays, and undergo one midterm and one final examination. Holy crap. The proposal for our first essay is due next week already.
According to my schedule, I’m assigned to a class led by a Prof. M. Fortune. Entering the lecture room, I spy a man sitting at the desk in front of the room, shuffling through papers. He looks familiar.Where have I met him? I scrutinize Fortune as he closes the classroom door: neat denims, blue shirt and tie, leather jacket. Nice pouty lips. On the chair beside his desk, I spy a motorcycle helmet.
Help. It’s the lean-legged Latin cowboy motorcycle guy. I hope he doesn’t remember me stranded on the roadside in my scruffy hockey hoodie. Probably not, since today I’m superbly pulled together with glazed hair and wicked new colored jeans, unlike the windswept mess I was two weeks ago.
Fortune leans on the edge of his desk to deliver his opening lecture on the birth of modern American poetry. I like the way he cradles a small and tattered book of poetry in his large hands. He sets the book carefully on the desk and recites Whitman’s Leaves of Grass from memory, and his voice sounds deep and soulful as if he means it. All the women in the class lean forward, sighing, captivated. Listening to Fortune recite is like a spa day for our parched womanly souls, complete with plush robes and scented steam.
At the end of class, Fortune stands beside the door, letting the students go out first. As I pass him, he grins at me and fakes a wrist shot, saying, “She shoots, she scores. And the crowd goes wild!”
Blushing, I step past quickly and hurry to the parking lot. My first day of school is finally over. Two long intro lectures plus hours of standing in lineups at the bookstore and traipsing from one end of the campus and back again several times with a heavy backpack means I’m going straight home, ordering takeout and spending the night curled up in a blanket on the couch. I better get to bed early as my first class in Financial Management starts at 8 a.m. tomorrow.
My phone beeps. It’s a text from Bibienne: “Don’t forget—we got ice time tonight.”
I almost forgot. My tiredness vanishes: I’m signed up for the summer pick-up hockey league. Time to dig out my lucky dog tags. I’m so down with that: the crunch of bodies against the boards, passing the puck down the ice to victory, the beer celebration in the locker room. So what if my joints can’t
The woman with the bright yellow crocs walks over to the lectern and clears her throat into the microphone. She wants to know if everyone has downloaded a course outline. Everyone in the room has their own laptop on the desk in front of them. No one told me to download a course outline or bring a laptop to class. The prof is giving us instructions on how to link to a website for information on something called restriction enzymes. Then she wants us to go to a departmental webpage that has a set of links to the labs we need to download.
Labs? Wait a minute. There’s something hinky going on here. Why does she keep talking about genomes and recombinant DNA technology? I take a peek at the laptop on the desk beside me. The heading on top of the screen says Course Outline: Cell and Molecular Biology.
I step on a few Crocs in my haste to exit.
As I enter the right lecture hall, in the next building, Professor Greshen looks up from his lectern. He glares at me with bulgy eyes, and pauses to remind the class that lateness is disrespectful and we should all try to be on time for lecture in the future.
All the seats are taken. Now I have to slouch at the back of the room and hang my head in shame with all the other rude latecomers.
At lunch, I review the course syllabus for my Modern American Poetry class. I’m required to attend one lecture plus one tutorial per week, and I have to read sixteen million poems, write two essays, and undergo one midterm and one final examination. Holy crap. The proposal for our first essay is due next week already.
According to my schedule, I’m assigned to a class led by a Prof. M. Fortune. Entering the lecture room, I spy a man sitting at the desk in front of the room, shuffling through papers. He looks familiar.Where have I met him? I scrutinize Fortune as he closes the classroom door: neat denims, blue shirt and tie, leather jacket. Nice pouty lips. On the chair beside his desk, I spy a motorcycle helmet.
Help. It’s the lean-legged Latin cowboy motorcycle guy. I hope he doesn’t remember me stranded on the roadside in my scruffy hockey hoodie. Probably not, since today I’m superbly pulled together with glazed hair and wicked new colored jeans, unlike the windswept mess I was two weeks ago.
Fortune leans on the edge of his desk to deliver his opening lecture on the birth of modern American poetry. I like the way he cradles a small and tattered book of poetry in his large hands. He sets the book carefully on the desk and recites Whitman’s Leaves of Grass from memory, and his voice sounds deep and soulful as if he means it. All the women in the class lean forward, sighing, captivated. Listening to Fortune recite is like a spa day for our parched womanly souls, complete with plush robes and scented steam.
At the end of class, Fortune stands beside the door, letting the students go out first. As I pass him, he grins at me and fakes a wrist shot, saying, “She shoots, she scores. And the crowd goes wild!”
Blushing, I step past quickly and hurry to the parking lot. My first day of school is finally over. Two long intro lectures plus hours of standing in lineups at the bookstore and traipsing from one end of the campus and back again several times with a heavy backpack means I’m going straight home, ordering takeout and spending the night curled up in a blanket on the couch. I better get to bed early as my first class in Financial Management starts at 8 a.m. tomorrow.
My phone beeps. It’s a text from Bibienne: “Don’t forget—we got ice time tonight.”
I almost forgot. My tiredness vanishes: I’m signed up for the summer pick-up hockey league. Time to dig out my lucky dog tags. I’m so down with that: the crunch of bodies against the boards, passing the puck down the ice to victory, the beer celebration in the locker room. So what if my joints can’t
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