dr_mabeuse
seduce the mind
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2002
- Posts
- 11,528
Professor Gregory Taylor Adjunct Professor of Anthropology
Four o’clock on a Friday afternoon and the entire building was deserted except for me. I stood at my window looking out on the quad where students, their last finals for the year now over, were comparing notes, laughing, making plans for the weekend ahead. I envied them. I envied anyone who didn’t have a four-inch pile of final exams that still needed grading sitting on his desk.
I would have been off making my own plans for the weekend if it weren’t for a four o’clock meeting I had with one of my students. These end-of- term meetings were always the same: kids begging you to change their grade, fighting with you about some missing work they insisted they turned in, wanting a chance to make up some test they had missed a month ago, pleading, crying, threatening. I didn’t have the heart for it today. I just wasn’t in the mood.
I’d just been passed over for the tenure-track position I’d wanted and fought for over the last six months, and it didn’t leave me feeling very good. I wasn’t in a very charitable mood, and the thought of having to deal with those young eager faces with their high hopes and plans for the future fairly filled me with dread. I’d worked my ass off for my students over the last year, knowing the department was watching me, and the idea that anyone could have failed my class after the absurd lengths I’d gone taken to make sure everyone did well was like a personal insult. I mean, you really had to work hard to fail after all the work I’d put into it.
Well, it was all over now. I could stop killing myself, stop watching everything I said or did lest I create an unfavorable impression in the department. Summer was coming, and there was no guarantee that they’d pick up my contract in the fall. I was a lame duck professor.
I caught sight of her crossing the quad, not moving that quickly even though she was already late. What was her name? Alexandra something: Lexi. She was a very good student. How she’d managed to blow my Anthro 425 class so spectacularly was a mystery to me. It was an easy class: Culture and Human Sexual Behavior. Kids took it their senior year just because it was so easy. How had she managed to blow it so completely? Well, I'd find out soon enough. I'm sure she was going to lay the whole tale of sadness and woe out before me. I knew the routine.
I watched her through the window. She was young, gorgeous in that young, offhand way, and seemed like a nice enough girl. She was smart, wealthy, and had it all. No doubt she had big plans for the fall: graduate school or a good job, something like that.
She stopped and talked to some other kids and for the first time I felt a rush of anger and resentment against her, against all the students, against the whole school. All the years of graduate school, of thesis work, of scraping by as an adjunct professor, and what did I have to show for it? Not a hell of a lot. A car that barely ran, a cheap apartment, barely enough to keep myself fed and clothed. No doubt Lexi would be stepping into a job that paid her several times over what I made, stepping into it as if the world owed it to her.
She looked like it. She looked like the world owed her a living, owed her a good job and a lot of money just because she came out of a good school with good grades and a good education provided by under-appreciated, underpaid drudges like
Antomatically I cleared off the books from the chair where she'd probably sit as she gave me her sob story. I cleared off some papers from the old leather sofa in my office as well, and as I was clearing off the sofa the thought hit me.
I had something she wanted. Something she wanted very badly, even though she didn't deserve it: a passing grade in Anthro 425. Just how badly did she want that grade? How much would she be willing to give me for it?
I'd never done anything like this with a student before. Never even thought of it. But now as I watched her move that ripe young body up the stairs of the Anthro building, the thought hit me: I could have that. I've never done it, but I know it happens all the time. I could have that if I wanted.
And why shouldn't I?
Four o’clock on a Friday afternoon and the entire building was deserted except for me. I stood at my window looking out on the quad where students, their last finals for the year now over, were comparing notes, laughing, making plans for the weekend ahead. I envied them. I envied anyone who didn’t have a four-inch pile of final exams that still needed grading sitting on his desk.
I would have been off making my own plans for the weekend if it weren’t for a four o’clock meeting I had with one of my students. These end-of- term meetings were always the same: kids begging you to change their grade, fighting with you about some missing work they insisted they turned in, wanting a chance to make up some test they had missed a month ago, pleading, crying, threatening. I didn’t have the heart for it today. I just wasn’t in the mood.
I’d just been passed over for the tenure-track position I’d wanted and fought for over the last six months, and it didn’t leave me feeling very good. I wasn’t in a very charitable mood, and the thought of having to deal with those young eager faces with their high hopes and plans for the future fairly filled me with dread. I’d worked my ass off for my students over the last year, knowing the department was watching me, and the idea that anyone could have failed my class after the absurd lengths I’d gone taken to make sure everyone did well was like a personal insult. I mean, you really had to work hard to fail after all the work I’d put into it.
Well, it was all over now. I could stop killing myself, stop watching everything I said or did lest I create an unfavorable impression in the department. Summer was coming, and there was no guarantee that they’d pick up my contract in the fall. I was a lame duck professor.
I caught sight of her crossing the quad, not moving that quickly even though she was already late. What was her name? Alexandra something: Lexi. She was a very good student. How she’d managed to blow my Anthro 425 class so spectacularly was a mystery to me. It was an easy class: Culture and Human Sexual Behavior. Kids took it their senior year just because it was so easy. How had she managed to blow it so completely? Well, I'd find out soon enough. I'm sure she was going to lay the whole tale of sadness and woe out before me. I knew the routine.
I watched her through the window. She was young, gorgeous in that young, offhand way, and seemed like a nice enough girl. She was smart, wealthy, and had it all. No doubt she had big plans for the fall: graduate school or a good job, something like that.
She stopped and talked to some other kids and for the first time I felt a rush of anger and resentment against her, against all the students, against the whole school. All the years of graduate school, of thesis work, of scraping by as an adjunct professor, and what did I have to show for it? Not a hell of a lot. A car that barely ran, a cheap apartment, barely enough to keep myself fed and clothed. No doubt Lexi would be stepping into a job that paid her several times over what I made, stepping into it as if the world owed it to her.
She looked like it. She looked like the world owed her a living, owed her a good job and a lot of money just because she came out of a good school with good grades and a good education provided by under-appreciated, underpaid drudges like
Antomatically I cleared off the books from the chair where she'd probably sit as she gave me her sob story. I cleared off some papers from the old leather sofa in my office as well, and as I was clearing off the sofa the thought hit me.
I had something she wanted. Something she wanted very badly, even though she didn't deserve it: a passing grade in Anthro 425. Just how badly did she want that grade? How much would she be willing to give me for it?
I'd never done anything like this with a student before. Never even thought of it. But now as I watched her move that ripe young body up the stairs of the Anthro building, the thought hit me: I could have that. I've never done it, but I know it happens all the time. I could have that if I wanted.
And why shouldn't I?
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