#because our funding is supposed to be such a generous stipend that we can focus all our time on studying

[ramshacklefey]

Physically, I am getting through it.

Mentally, I am laying on the ground kicking my feet and screaming that it isn't fair.

[sfiddy]

So Bad

For @academialynx , who made a donation to her local food bank in return for a fic!  This is a college AU, moderately prof/student (though the theme is that they DON’T break the rules) boatloads of yearning, and janky building maintenance that leads to getting locked in a closet.  She asked me to consider the Brandon Colbein song So Bad.  Which I did.  :)

Thank you, Dear!  Here we go!

Rated T

On AO3

On FF

On Tumblr!  (keep reading!)

Another champagne cork popped and a delighted cheer spread through the room.  Glasses, plastic cups, and hastily drained coffee mugs were refreshed and the party carried on.  Theirs was not a large music department, so to have attracted a fresh, exciting, multi-talented composition and collaborative piano specialist with a few international awards, one ‘early career’ grant and another from the National Endowment for the Arts meant their modest program was about to gain a little fresh clout at interdepartmental tenured faculty meetings.

“Congratulations again, Erik!”  Dr. Nadir Khan hauled Erik into a vigorous handshake and pumped for a full three seconds.  

Erik winced.  He’d be hamfisting the keys tomorrow if they kept this up.  “Thank you, Dean Khan.  It’s an honor to join as a full professor.”

“I am Nadir to you, and don’t forget it.”  Nadir refilled Erik’s plastic cup and tapped his department coffee mug against it, sloshing their champagne into frothy heads.  “It’s hard to believe it’s been five years, Erik!  You cost me a bet, I’ll have you know.  I didn’t think you’d stay after you had to teach that semester of History of Rock and Roll for non-majors.”

The lantern-jawed oboe professor laughed.  “Or the infamous Intro to Music Theory.”

“No, no,” disagreed Umbaldo Piangi, the portly voice teacher.  “When I went on sabbatical to Teatro La Fenice and you gave him The Chamber Music Outreach Project and graduate tutoring.  No warning!”  Even the big man’s clucking tongue was musical.  “But, Piangi is back, no?  I will cut back my performance hours and take back all the lessons and weekends and let Dr. Erik Devereaux return to his writing!”

“Actually,” Erik said, and the room stilled.  “The only part I disliked was the public part.  I never minded the private instruction.  If you would like to split the load, I’m happy to keep the instructional portion while you handle the tours, performances, and...outreach?”  He suppressed the grimace well enough.

Piangi, Italian down to his fine shoes, let out a whoop and grabbed Erik in a hug so tight it pressed his ribcage and nearly dislodged his delicate porcelain mask from it’s fine wire and leather fittings.

“Ah, my partner now!  I will call donors and show off the little tweeting songbirds with my lovely Carlotta while you teach them not to call for worms!  A toast!”  Piangi held up his plastic cup once again.  

Erik accepted a toast that crackled the edge of his plastic cup and hoped for something new and shiny to distract them.  Or for the lights to suddenly flicker and fail as they were prone to do, along with randomly closing doors in the terribly laid out office and work spaces.  The college had access to talent pipelines that the underfunded and neglected department had not been able to tap.  Their aggressive recruitment of him was a last ditch effort for change before the tiny group was relegated to a four piece for the university reagent’s cocktail brunch and a marching band for the far-better funded football team.

“To Dr. Devereaux!”

With a conspiratorial grin, Erik drained his cup and winked at Piangi.  “To the songbirds.”

…

Tenure in hand, Erik started his campaign.  Once he ditched the worst teaching credits to lecturers and adjuncts, he could focus on recruiting.  Specifically, to score a few respected but not-yet-headliner talents.  Emerging performers without a good gig had few options and the status and modest stipend to be a ‘visiting artist’ might be more attractive than the floating gulag of a cruise ship.  

A few excellent but relatively unknown performers could teach and perform, receive some finishing, and get quickly farmed out into the world.  The reputation-building move would be pricey, but no one gets paid dividends before investing.

His development grant would cover three such artists.  He got more than fifty applications.  Erik rubbed his eyes under the mask.  It was a good thing he never had plans-- it would be a long weekend.

…

The old music labs building had settled over the years and gained what the senior faculty referred to as ‘personality’.   Erik took this to mean ‘genially hazardous’.  No amount of facility requests or complaints brought the doors and keys division to do maintenance.

He was a quick learner though, and only got locked in his workroom twice before catching the door with his foot became second nature.   He even set a flaking brick, plucked from a neglected flower bed outside, in the corner by the door and kicked it against the frame as a doorstop.  Every time he came to his workroom, a narrow converted closet with a work bench and packed with shelves of manuscripts, music, errant repair kits and recording equipment, he would hit the outside light switch, unlock the door, step in, catch the door, then kick the brick.  

Switch, step, catch, kick.  His shoes were gaining new wear marks.

After kicking the brick into place, Erik opened his laptop and went over the last files.  He’d asked the department admins to strip out the audio files to just the audition pieces and remove identifying details from the fifty applications.  If he was going to invite talent, their first hurdle would be their musicianship.  Once he’d culled the herd to ten, he’d submitted his picks to the dean to select the three finalists.  Now they needed invitations.  Two vocalists and a classical guitarist made the cut and he spent the next few hours getting more acquainted with their files and ignoring the pings of his filling inbox.

At least it was just his inbox.  No one came to the music labs and his closet if they could help it.

If he was honest, no one came to meet him in person if they could help it.

…

Most performers were beautiful.  Entire websites and product lines were devoted to skincare for singers, makeup tutorials, look books and wardrobe consulting.  Erik’s particular variety of deformity would stand out in any circumstances, but in an entire department stuffed with the striking, stunning, and unconventionally glorious, he bordered on eyesore.  Even Piangi could command a room with his generous, rosy smiles and booming laugh.  

The mask was the best combination of memorable and functional he could muster.  Yes, surgery was an option but who signed up for years of unnecessary pain and the risk of infection?  He had better things to do.  

Like meet with his new visiting artists.  

The classical guitarist had supple wrists and forearms like Popeye.  His rolled cuffs drew the eye to the action while his cleverly knotted scarf kept you looking at his face, framed by artfully mussed hair.  

“We’re looking forward to your first concerts and hope you’ll consider collaborations with local programs.”

The baritone had a one in a million voice.  How he hadn’t been snapped up for opera yet was a mystery but Erik supposed it was his poor presence.  When you had the goods, you still had to sell them, and the young man’s love of neon, bad hair, and questionable repertoire (pin the tail on a Hal Leonard page) needed polish.  His work was shockingly precise and sounded like he had a cathedral in his mouth.

“Our faculty and staff are a rich resource for young performers and are always eager to assist.  We often work in parallel with the communications department and local professionals to prepare our artists for the culture and community as well as the stage.”

The soprano was the risk.  The recording had been largely boilerplate and her prior experience thin.  The reason she got in was a one-point-two second pause in her audition tape.  It was the silence that told Erik she had chops.  

Imagine, a soprano unafraid of silence.  It had been late in the weekend when he selected her and had not yet been able to examine the head shot.

“I… um...”

“Yes, Dr. Devereaux?”

“Welcome, Miss Daaé.”

…

The visiting artists would survey classes, provide demonstrations and guest lectures, and appear at university events, auditions, and generally get the word out that the department was shifting to a growth phase.  That was the official description.  Unofficially, there would be a mountain of effort to make each emerging artist a shot on goal for the department.  Recording deals, major and paid appearances, and successful auditions all counted toward the tally.  

Guitar was not Erik’s forte, and as much as he could contribute to the baritone’s look and polish, Erik had cultivated a far more… refined profile than the young man aspired to.  Erik maintained collars sharp enough to cut bread and a spotless sheen on his porcelain mask.  Right now, Dean Khan aspired to cut the young man’s mullet tail off.  

“Excellent, Miss Daaé, right on time.”  Erik slid the fall board up and they prepared to work.  She understood how to modulate her tone, how to select the emotional pitch to match the song, to contrast with it for effect.  She explored her range and willingly failed to find her borders.  It all made for an excellent student.

It was the quiet that made her breathtaking.  The anticipation of her.  Tenths of seconds that tightened the chest and made a quiver run through the blood.  Not often, only when it mattered, and only when it would matter enough to do so.  

When he could stand it no more, he asked her about it.

“I’m sorry, I can try to stop.”

“I didn’t ask you to stop, I asked when you started doing it.”

She considered him, her ribbons of curling hair twisting as she shifted.  “When my father was sick.  I could feel the need for silences because he couldn’t talk anymore.  It just felt… right.”

Erik nodded.  “Again.”

…

She’d been a late bloomer.  A ghost on the scene and at least five years older than the rest of the sopranos at her stage.  It also meant she hadn’t spent her entire high school and college career belting Broadway in the recital rooms, building nodes on her vocal chords.  

They finished late one night and he walked her to her car.  “So what did you do for practice?”

She pinked under the parking lot lights.  “I, um… waited tables at an Italian restaurant.  You know, where your server might sing opera when they bring you breadsticks?”

Erik nodded.  “Parmesan and Puccini?”

Bless her, she giggled.  “Bellinis and Bellini.  A few really knew when they were hearing but most just wanted to hear Nessun Dorma because they heard it on Youtube.  I managed to get a few singing jobs out of it but I mostly just waited tables.”  They stopped at her car but she hadn’t reached for her keys yet.  “I was a bartender and the second understudy for a Gilbert and Sullivan society when I saw your announcement.”

“Their loss,” Erik said.  He left off the second half.

“Thanks.”  Christine hesitated.  “I didn’t expect to be accepted, so… thanks.”  

Something changed in the breeze.  Something cool and soft in the night air mixed with the gold light pouring down from the lights.  It highlighted the curls that spiralled out of control around her neck as she tilted her head just so.  

It was just a moment, a funny thump that ricocheted in his chest at her upturned face, her soft smile.  Maybe her eyes flicked down, maybe her sharp inhale had a little catch in it.  Maybe it was the way her lip twitched, but a red flag suddenly waved in Erik’s head and he stepped back carefully.  He had a powerful fear of heat and burns.

“Yes, of course.  The, uh, department was very happy to offer the opportunity.”

She blinked.  “Of course.  Well, thanks for the great session and walking me to my car.  Have a nice evening, Erik.”

Christine drove away and Erik stood in the parking lot for some minutes after her taillights had faded.  He imagined it.  Surely, he’d taken a friendly conversation the wrong way.  She wasn’t his student, strictly speaking, but he had influence over her career, which would be just as bad.  

Besides, he had completely misread the whole thing.  Surely.  Women didn’t look up at him like that-- like he would kiss them.  After a walk after dark, telling him about themselves, and looking at him like that.

No one looked at him like... that.

Oh no.

…

She wasn’t strictly his student.  He was her mentor.  Even a brief thought made it obvious and completely inappropriate.  Did she think it would improve her opportunities?

Erik swallowed.  No, if that was the game she wouldn’t have backed off.  Surely he’d misread the situation.

…

They brewed tea together.  She remembered his favorite oolong.

…

He saw a cascade of curling hair on his way to the post office and his heart leapt.

It wasn’t her.  The disappointment was too confusing to examine.

…

His mouth went dry when her sweater slipped from her shoulder.  Then he knocked the music from the stand.

She smiled and helped him pick up the sheets.  

There were freckles on her shoulder.

... 

Five months into the visiting artist tour and Piangi had the concert hall packed for their first performances.  Franco the guitarist, who preferred just the one name, would play a twenty minute set, followed by the baritone Burton Armstrong, as baritoney a name as Erik had ever heard, then Christine, and finally Franco would play again with accompaniment.  

Erik was content to stay in a tiny box seat far to the side as Piangi introduced each performer.  Franco had gained the stage he deserved, and Burton had been convinced to get a proper haircut and suit, and sang a particularly impressive Russian ballad set.  

Christine was introduced and settled onto the stage.  She was radiant in dark blue, and decorated her baroque set with agility.  From his perch, Erik could as easily imagine her distributing bellinis as gracing an opera stage.  It was not an insult.  After her short set, she nodded and was joined by Burton.  A duet?  

She looked up and found him, up in his perch.  She nodded, and the two launched into a series of excerpts from Semele, Handel’s somewhat neglected tale of a torrid affair between a mortal woman and the god, Jupiter.

Their gazes met as she sang.

O Jove! In pity teach me which to choose,

Incline me to comply, or help me to refuse!

The baritone thundered.

Too well I read her meaning,

But must not understand her.

If Erik’s ears heard the rest of the concert, he could not recall it later.

…

Dean Khan adjourned the faculty meeting.  “Oh Erik, if you have a moment?”

They waited until the room was cleared and Nadir closed the door, then casually looked over the remaining pastries.  “Excellent concert last month.  The work with Burton is certainly paying off.”  

Erik leaned against the table.  “His socks were bright green, but we felt it was a workable compromise.”

“Franco is excellent in front of the crowd.  Has he met the flamenco dancers yet?”

“I put in a call.  I think he’s going to their weekly meeting next Thursday.”

“Marvelous.  Let me know how that goes when you hear, won’t you?”

“Of course.”  Erik felt his chest tighten the longer Nadir perused the snacks and chose to tear off the bandage himself.  “Anything else?”

“There is, in fact,” Nadir did not look up from the muffins.  “Christine’s performance was exceptional.  Truly filled with passion.”

Erik tried to take a sip of coffee but his cup was empty.  He faked it.  “She’s a wonderful artist.”

“Yes.  I couldn’t help but notice--” Nadir paused over the croissants, then passed them over to examine the cookies.  “You two seem to have a unique and strong mentor-trainee relationship.”

“Thank you.”  It had not been a question.  There was nothing here… yet.  “We work well together.”  

“I’m glad to hear that.  The program you’ve created is admirable for it’s transparency and integrity.”

“I agree.  Thank you for noticing.”

Nadir looked up with a slight nod, then selected a macadamia cookie.  “I’m sure the remaining six months will fly by, Erik.”

He had no idea how to respond.

...

Six months.  There were six months left in the visiting artist term.  There were more sessions, a mini tour, and a series of small concerts meant to showcase the new talent the department had ‘produced’.  

Six months of lies, pretending he was misunderstanding something.  Pretending he didn’t notice the way she was at his side and on his mind.  Then she would leave him to the dull, overworked life he’d made for himself in the hopes of making a name for himself while simultaneously avoiding attention.  More lies, but easier to swallow.  

Her voice came from the hallway.  “Erik?  I’m heating up some water, would you like tea?”

“Is it the one you brought?”

A light laugh.  Sparkling.  “Of course.”

He dropped his work and grabbed his cup.  “Be right there.”

…

A very successful fundraiser was wrapping up on the top floor of the performing arts center.  It had a view over the campus, the nice side, and the glow of downtown caught the streaking rain on the tall glass walls.  

The donors had been generous, delighted with the new features of the program and the willingness to be accessible.  Erik stayed to the side, avoiding the center of the room where Piangi and his wife Carlotta took up residence.  Nadir circulated the room, nudging him out from time to time for a refill and to participate.  When forced to do so, Erik sloshed some middling red wine into his glass and let himself slip into Christine’s gravity for a few minutes before drifting away again.  

He could feel her gaze.

The cocktail party was to end at eleven-thirty, and by then nearly all the guests had left.  The last ones were rushed  out and Piangi hurried to the bar.  

“Open season!” 

A quick crush to the bar and every open bottle was ‘liberated’ to the long-suffering exhibits.  Christine topped off her glass and passed the bottle to a fellow soprano, hardly twenty years old, and the two laughed and kicked off their heels.  Piangi and Burton laughed over an earlier flub and the cello player, finally able to pack his instrument and relax, demanded and received a full glass.

Erik tipped back a hearty, warm swallow and emerged from the hinterlands.

“Oh, hi Dr. Devereaux!  Did you just get here?” teased Carlotta.  “Your legend only grows the more you hide.”

“All part of my devious plan,” he conceded.  Christine’s giggle mingled with the laughs of her peers.  “If you’ll excuse me.  Piangi, brilliant as always.”

“Same to you, Erik!  We plan many parties now, no?”

Easing his way towards the mirth, Erik relaxed.  There were plenty of others around, and this was just the after party to a long dog and pony show.  Listen to the pretty songbirds and throw money at the program, invitation only.  They all deserved drinks after three hours of that.

Christine was plucking a pin from her hair.  She shook the curls loose.  “Hi Erik!  God, I’m so glad to see you.”

“Oh?”

She held up a bottle.  “Yeah, you need a refill.”  

It had been a long night.  These events could be tricky to navigate.  Sometimes there was politics, other times business rivals.  More often, donors expected special privilege and access in exchange for their checks, as if the last hundred years of progress meant nothing.  The way a few of them had looked at Erik, maybe it didn’t.  

He let her pour some white wine over the dregs of his red.  Improvised rosé.  “Everything go okay?”  

“Good enough.  I think I have some auditions, and some stuff nearby might open up for me.”

“That’s great.  Who with?”

A nice chorus.  A solid baroque group.  Both could springboard to bigger things.  A few bigger things were here.  

“What’s bigger?”  She asked, her eyes dark and soft.  

He had not meant to speak, and now he rushed his words.  “Things!  Choirs, operas.  There’s a few small opera troupes and there’s churches that need choral directors that know how to work with organ and piano.”

She sniggered.  “Organs.”  The other soprano dissolved into giggles.

Erik pulled out his phone.  Clearly neither was driving tonight.  He absently tallied up his glasses and admitted he wasn’t either.

“Do you play the organ, Erik?”

“Yes.”

Christine stepped closer and, on pure instinct, Erik put his arm around her as she turned her head to speak.

“Can I watch?”  

His collar was tight.  He pulled up the app and ordered a car.

They ran through the rain, more than sprinkled, less than soaked.  Plenty wet to shiver from the chill of the driver’s exuberant air conditioning, though.  Between giggles and poorly composed directions, they dropped off the other soprano who wobbled successfully to her door before their driver sped away.  Christine did not shift away to the other seat, but leaned into him, tucking herself against his side.  

The driver glanced in the rear view mirror, then looked away.

She was cool and smooth.  Her loosened curls had tightened from the wet and tickled his neck and brushed against his mask.  

Her hand on his thigh.  Erik said nothing.  If he was silent there was a kind of deniability, or denial at least, of what was happening.  If he could deny that her fingernails caught on the inner seam of his trousers, then she could deny that his hand was firmly planted at her waist, holding her close.

And if she could deny that, then she could also deny that her nose bumped his chin, her ragged breath loud in his ears.  And they could both deny that their lips grazed, a not-kiss somehow more intimate than if their lips moved and pulled at each other.  Like her singing, it was the pause that made your breath catch and your insides tug.

“What number?”

Dashboards lights reflected in her eyes.  “That one,” she said, and cautiously settled.  The driver pulled forward and Christine unbuckled.  

“Good night, Erik.  See you tomorrow.”

“Good night, Christine.”

The driver glanced in the rearview.  Erik looked down.  “Sorry.”

The driver shrugged.  

One more month.

…

He was hiding.  He’d been hiding for weeks; stopped looking for her, stopped even wondering where she was or if she was alone.  There was no way to be near her without the pretense of a piano that wouldn’t leave him shaking.  No way to think about her without wanting.

He was Erik, a composer, a conductor, performer, designer of auditory spaces and translator of music.  He was a collaborative pianist and vocal specialist.  He’d given everything to music and the service of it, the delivery of it.  He didn’t need this. He’d never had this.

No one ever offered.  So he’d found fulfillment elsewhere, until now.

Erik hunched over his work, safely tucked into his corner of the music labs building.  Between grading, senior thesis submissions, revisions to his own publications, and a request for a letter of recommendation, he could be plenty busy late into the night with no need for anyone to--

“Hello?  Erik?”

Erik snatched at his mask and settled it.  He’d been found.  Time to lie, except he can’t lie to her.

“Can I help you with something, Christine?”  He gathered a stack and stood.  She met him by his door.

“Well, yeah,” she paused, blocking his path momentarily before stepping aside.  “I need your signature on my visiting artist release.  And another on my endorsement for my new job.”

Erik hefted his armload to the work closet.  “I’m sure they look forward to meeting you.  Come on.”  He unlocked the door and held it open, then followed behind her, hitting the light switch with his elbow before catching the door on his foot, then he kicked the brick into place.  He had to hold the stack to keep it from spilling across the work table.

She handed him the forms.  Erik moved to a span of clean tabletop and started scanning the release form.  Government agency boilerplate to satisfy the grant was mixed with flowery language so no one would suspect they were anything but artists.  Yesterday Franco had brought Burton’s form-- yep, this was Christine’s.  So on and so forth.

Erik had just finished scratching out his signature when he heard a familiar scrape.

“Why on earth do you keep a-”

Click.

“--brick?”

Erik pressed the heel of his hand into his chin.  

“Are we… locked in?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”  A faint rumble vibrated in the walls.  “I don’t suppose that was just… construction?”

Erik let out a mirthless laugh.  “There were storms brewing earlier.  Besides, does this building look like they work on it?”

“Not really.”

Another rumble, louder, and the light fixture jittered.  

Christine finally took a deep breath.  “Have you been avoiding me?”

“No!  Yes.  I don’t know.”  He touched his hairline, recapped a pen.  “We crossed a line.  I had to get back behind it and I couldn’t if we…”  His hands skated across the table top nervously.  

“Is this about being my mentor?”

Erik barked an ugly, bitter laugh.  “What else?  God, you just, out of nowhere, with your smiles, and the way you look at me, and sing to me, and the Semele…” Erik’s skin grew tight as he recalled the cocktail party.  He turned, face growing hot beneath the porcelain and his throat tightening.  He was a ruin.

“--and the touching and wanting and you’re… you’re just going to leave!  I’m a fucking idiot!”

On cue, an extended, throaty roar of thunder rattled the stone and brick until the bare bulb above could suffer no more.  With a loud pop, the narrow room went dark.  They both scuffled in the dark until they had hold of something sturdy.

“Erik?”

He was embarrassed.  He was frustrated.  “What.”

“You need to sign the other form.”

“Want to get away that bad?  Fine.”  He reached for a desk lamp and tried to turn it on.  He flipped the switch furiously.  The power was out.

“Here,” Christine held up her phone and lit the screen.  Her screensaver was… them? Beside a piano together?

Erik snatched a pen from the table and slashed his name.  “There.  Just search for facilities or call the university police.  They can unlock the door.”

“Erik, did you even look at it?”

“Why bother.”

She snorted at him.  “God, you’re so blind.”

“The lights were out.”

“Fine, you want to be a jerk, be one, but at least look at where I’m taking a job before you decide to walk.”

She lit up her phone once more and he glared at the page like it was staring at his mask.  He tracked the offer and terms until he reached the party names and…

“You took a job at… a middle school?  Here?”  He looked up into the dim light.  “You’re not leaving?”

“Meet the new grade six to eight choir director.  Go Scotties.  And now you have no direct influence over my career.”

Her screensaver dimmed, and before it went dark, Erik could make out a flash of their faces, turned to each other.  He wondered if Nadir had seen this moment, because they looked as passionate as lovers despite being feet apart.

The room went black again, and he could hear her moving.

“I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“That much has been apparent.  What do you know?”

She was close.  Close enough to feel the way she shifted the air.  “I know way too much about motif design, lyric phrasing--”

Closer.  “Go on.”  Her hips were near his. 

“Harmonic theory, vocals”

 “Can attest.”  Her fingertips were at his jawline, tracing his mask.  “I thought it would be cold.”

“It’s been on my face all day.  Early Romantic era competition and,” his voice scraped over gravel, “that I want you. So bad.”

Her kiss was her reply.  Erik’s hands flew around her as she pivoted to the table with him, dragging his mask upwards.  He gasped as cool air brushed his face, followed by light, curious fingertips and her hot mouth.  Erik knocked over the stack of papers and files with a satisfying splatter.

“Is that light over there?” she asked, dragging her lips from his.  “Around that cabinet door?”

“What?” he panted.  “I thought that was a panel.”

She pushed him off gently, peering up at the wall.  “Right there, see?”

Sure enough, there was a thin line of light.  It was a hidden door with a magnetic latch. 

“They can’t keep the regular door from locking you in but they put a trick door at the back?”  Erik complained as he climbed through awkwardly.  Very awkwardly.  Her lips were red and swollen.

“Let me grab my things and we can get out of here.”

Erik checked his watch.  “First, we’re turning in your forms.”

“It’s almost five!”

“We’ll make it if we run.”

Panting, they caught the dean just as he was packing up to leave.

“Erik, Christine?  Are you alright?  That was some storm we--”

Erik shoved the forms at him.  “Yep. Terrible storm.  Here.”

“Indeed, Erik.  Why, your hair is a mess and I’ve never seen your shirt untucked.”

“Big wind.  Yep.  Almost hit by lightning.  Here, time stamp?”

“Miss Daaé, you may want to adjust…”

“For God’s sake just take the stupid form so we can go!” Christine shouted.

Nadir laughed and scanned the forms.  “I don’t want to see you until Monday, Erik.  You better be late.”

He didn’t make it in until Wednesday.

...

[scholasticbabe]

25 Ways To Save In College That Work

Let’s face it, most college students are flat out broke. Yet the temptation to live it up and blow through whatever money you do have is absolutely crazy.

I’ve been there. Hell, I practically lived there.

During my freshman year, I blew through most of my savings. It was so bad I really had to start getting serious and see where could I cut back so I could still enjoy going out with my friends occasionally. It was hard at first because I was so used to not thinking about how I was spending.

But saving is like a superpower once you realize it’s possible it becomes easier. You don’t have to fall into the broke college student stereotype! College is filled with tiny ways you can save that will save you thousands over the long hall.

Now if you’re like me you’ve probably read a few of these “10 easy ways to save” articles a million times and the advice can be pretty sketchy and not easy to implement in your life at all.

Well here are ways that I’ve actually used as a college student myself, to not only save but still have fun while doing it.

1. Shop at the dollar store

You would be surprised at what you can get at the dollar store! Everything from small personal care items to cleaning supplies. My favorite thing to do is to stack up on all the cheap snacks and host movie nights in my dorm room.

2. Share account access to streaming services

This was something my roommate and I did. We wanted to watch more shows that were not on Netflix so we decided that I would pay for Hulu and she would pay for HBO. Our dorm was the best place to be because just about every movie or tv show you could think of, yet neither of us had to foot the whole bill. So try sharing accounts with friends and family.

3. Stop buying books use your college library instead

For over two years now I've worked at my college library and it blows my mind that a lot of students don’t know that they can find textbooks at their college library.

Not only do professors sometimes submit copies of books to the library, but a lot of humanities textbooks are in the general collection! Always always check your library to see if they have a copy of your textbook before you start looking online.

4. Don't do unpaid internships/ apply for college funding

I have a secret. I’ve never done an unpaid internship (and I don’t plan to). Not only am I broke but it’s unethical to work for long hours without getting paid and not everyone can do that.

As a history major almost ALL internships are unpaid. I’ve gotten around that by applying for internship stipends through my college.

Almost all colleges have them, so if you get internship contact your school’s career center and ask about funding opportunities! You don’t have to use your own money and you really shouldn’t have to.  

5. Unsubscribe to marketing emails

Yes, I’m looking at you with an inbox filled to the thousands filled with promotional emails.

Something I did this year when I was trying a no spend month was to unsubscribe from particularly tempting stores. It’s hard to focus on what you have and what’s important to you when you’re always being sold to. Do yourself the favor of cutting that shit out. Marketing emails are truly the devil.

6. Download coupon apps

This one is such an easy fix and yet so many people don’t do it! I use Honey for my online shopping purchases and I’ve never not saved on a purchase! For in-store shopping I use retailmenot to find coupon codes. These are such passive ways to save you’re losing money if you don’t use them.  

7. Abandon your cart

This is a sneaky trick I learned by accident. Once I was looking for a backpack and I was browsing through and I added the bag to my cart but I was still on the fence of dishing out 60 dollars for a backpack. When I checked my email only to see the company sent an email to remind me of the bag in my cart and offered 30% off. I was blown away and ever since then I always abandon my cart to see what kind of deals companies give.

8. Use influencer codes/links

You really should be doing this. The people you follow should add value to your life and one way that can add value is to provide you with discount codes! If there’s a product you're interested in you might want to look up reviews of that product or just mentions and see if there are any influencers who have codes for that product. Not only do they get a commission but you get to see the product in action and then save on your purchase.

9. Pack your stuff well at the end of the year

If you live out of state (or even in-state to be honest! ) you can lose massive amounts of money at the end of the year by throwing out perfectly good items because you have nowhere to put them. To combat this start packing your stuff early like a week or two before moving out and strategically pack your stuff and put a protective covering over things that can be damaged easily.

There’s no reason for you to have to keep repurchasing the same items every time you move back into college.  

10. Read the instruction on your clothing

This is something I recently started doing and it was an eye-opener. If you don’t do this you might not realize a lot of clothing have specialized care instruction and most time you just throw everything into the washer without looking to see what those care tips are.

If you’ve ever had a nice top that looked raggedy after you threw into the dryer then you might not realize that item was supposed to be air-dried. Save your self the time and money from constantly having to repurchase items due to improper care.

KEEP READING 

[thisdaynews]

My Weekend At the Activist Bootcamp Trying to Reshape the 2020 Race

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/my-weekend-at-the-activist-bootcamp-trying-to-reshape-the-2020-race/

My Weekend At the Activist Bootcamp Trying to Reshape the 2020 Race

STONY POINT, N.Y. — “When we were taught about the civil rights movement as kids, it was told to us as if a few big marches just happened and then the laws changed,” Emily LaShelle told me last weekend as she smoked a cigarette. Behind her, a group of her peers played Frisbee in a field while the sun set behind them. “But there was so much more work and effort by activists behind the scenes,” she said. “And that’s the kind of work we’re teaching people to be involved in for this movement.”

LaShelle is 21, with short-cropped blond hair and a nose piercing. Her movement is the Sunrise Movement, an organization of mostly twenty-something climate activists who are best known for seemingly instantly and improbably injecting the idea of a “Green New Deal” into the national conversation. This past week, more than 70 Sunrise activists, including LaShelle, traveled to a rural, multifaith retreat center along the Hudson River, about 50 miles north of New York City, to take part in a weeklong boot camp that’s intended to transform them into the next generation of climate activists—who, in turn, are supposed to transform American politics.

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Sunrise has already moved shockingly swiftly on that front. Last November, Sunrise activists joined newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a splashy protest at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office that catapulted the group to national relevance. The resulting publicity added thousands of people to the group’s ranks of supporters and active volunteers. Less than a year later, Sunrise’s proposal for a Green New Deal has gone from being widely mocked as an overly ambitious socialist fantasy (or the “Green Dream,” in Pelosi’s words) to being endorsed by 16 of the Democrats running for president—most recently by none other than Joe Biden. Four years after it was founded by several activists in the fossil-fuel divestment movement on college campuses and a climate policy researcher supported by the Sierra Club, Sunrise has become an influential force not just in climate activism but in Democratic politics. And its oldest staff member is only 33.

The most pressing question Sunrise now faces—and one that occupied this past week’s boot camp—is not unlike the one that faced Robert Redford at the end ofThe Candidate: What do we do now? How do a bunch of twenty-somethings, somewhatblindsided by their own success, come up with a next act?

The Sunrise Movement is part of a crop of progressive groups that have sprung up outside the mainstream Democratic Party and have helped to dramatically reshape the left’s agenda, often with minimal infrastructure. At its founding, Sunrise saw itself as solely focused on changing public opinion as an indirect means of pressuring the party’s establishment. But after the election of President Donald Trump, the group and its leaders underwent a change in philosophy: They needed to convert their idealism into power by engaging in hard politics.

In less than five years, Sunrise has grown from a small and quixotic project to a full-fledged advocacy organization that draws thousands of volunteers across the country and tens of thousands of participants to its events, including a large protest that’s being planned around the Democratic presidential debate in Detroit later this summer. Among the activists at the Sunrise boot camp, there was a palpable sense of enthusiasm but also anger and even desperation at what it calls the “climate crisis.” There was a pervasive feeling that previous generations of adults had ignored the apocalyptic threat of climate change and left it to be solved by millennials and Gen Zers. At times, Sunrise’s leaders seem like they’re winging it, or even engaging in a right-wing parody of performative wokeness. Yet it’s also undeniable that whatever this earnest and improvisational organization is doing, it’s working. The national discussion around climate change has moved more in the past eight months than it did during the previous eight years.

Last year, Sunrise held a similar boot camp for its activists, 75 like-minded young adults who were volunteering their summers to help a fledgling movement. No members of the news media showed up. “We were sending press releases out, but no one was responding,” Stephen O’Hanlon, Sunrise’s communications director and one of its eight original co-founders, told me last weekend. O’Hanlon is 23.

This year’s camp was for 60 full-time organizers who will receive food, housing and a stipend for up to six months, during which they’ll be placed in “movement houses” around the country.Politico Magazineshowed up, and so did a reporter forVogue. ANew York Timesvideo team was expected, too. “It’s fucking insane,” Victoria Fernandez, who’s 26 and another of the movement’s co-founders, said to me about the media coverage—and the organization’s rising status.

***

“Initially we thought,”Sunrise co-founder Sara Blazevic, who is 26, told me of the group’s founding, “if we can build the public support and the public pressure, our political system will follow. We’d be a movement that was pretty solely focused on the outside game strategy: building public pressure, elevating the urgency of the crisis in the eyes of the American people and demonstrating it to political leaders and forcing them to reckon with it,” she said.

That was the summer of 2016.

“And then when Trump got elected, and we realized there was just no credible path to passing any type of federal legislation on climate in four years, we realized that we also had to contend with how to win political power pretty seriously.”

Over the next year, Sunrise participated mostly in demonstrations organized by others, like a People’s Climate March in D.C. and a protest at the United Nations climate talks in Germany. As the group’s plan for how to focus its efforts on hard politics began to take shape, Sunrise began to acquire, either from donations or by paying rent, a series of houses across the country. In the summer of 2018, Sunrise placed activists in these movement houses, as it calls them, to work on campaigns in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York and Florida. They focused on picking candidates in Democratic primaries who would stand for bold progressive policies—candidates like Ocasio-Cortez, who received Sunrise’s endorsement and support.

After picking a candidate, the activists would, says Aracely Jiménez, a 22-year-old Sunrise staffer who started as a volunteer canvasser in New York last summer, knock on doors for them, often in working-class communities, telling people why “just any Democrat having a D next to their name doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to be fighting for immigrant rights or housing justice or climate justice.”

That fall, the election of Ocasio-Cortez, and the protest she joined at Pelosi’s office, was a “turning point” for the organization, said Claire Tacherra-Morrison, a 24-year-old University of California, Berkeley graduate who participated in the protest and is now a Sunrise staffer.

“We were saying all the same shit on November 12 as we were on November 13,” Blazevic said, “but having Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez saying it with us really did change everything.”

She added, “Part of what made our protest so powerful was because we had this story: We just hustled and worked our asses off for six months to help win back the House for Dems, and they owe us better than this. They owe us a plan, and they don’t have one.”

A year ago, Sunrise had an organized presence in only about a dozen cities. By December, that grew to around 80, and now has reached more than 250. Each city is organized from a “hub,” usually led by regular, part-time volunteers; each hub is autonomous, choosing where and what to protest and whom to endorse in local elections, and volunteers write op-eds and letters to the editor for their local newspapers on behalf of the broader movement. “We don’t have a super hierarchical structure where a CEO or CFO has to sign off on every plan,” Blazevic said to a group of the activists at this past week’s boot camp.

Last year, Sunrise operated on a budget of about $850,000, its leaders say, while this year they have a budget goal of about $4.5 million. They received several large foundation grants, but they also said “a huge portion of funding comes from individual grassroots donations.”

***

The boot camp itself sometimes seemedlike a cross between a summer camp for hippies and a high school pep rally. There were a lot of songs sung in circles, the facilitators shared many favorable videos and articles about Sunrise published over the past year, and people snapped incessantly to show support whenever anyone said anything remotely vulnerable or profound. Other times, it could feel like first-year orientation at a liberal college. Participants were asked to share their preferred gender pronouns along with their names during introductions. A Sunrise leader opened the very first session by thanking the spirits of the Native Americans whose land they were on.

But when they got down to work, the boot camp felt more like a corporate retreat designed to foster team-building and to inculcate new recruits on the values of the organization. The activists were trained on the history of Sunrise and its theory of change. On how to be “compelling storytellers.” On how to canvass, how to plan protests and how to strategically question presidential candidates on the trail. Others were trained to be trainers, so that Sunrise can expand exponentially.

Benjamin Finegan, a 22-year-old activist who took the last year off from Cornell to move into Sunrise’s Philadelphia movement house, says while the group is young and likes to emphasize its youth, it isn’t trying to reinvent progressive activism—just the politics of climate change. “We take a lot of guidance from slightly older to much older people in other movements,” he said. Sunrise uses a “public narrative model” developed by famed community organizer-turned-Harvard professor Marshall Ganz. Movement houses were used by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. Another Sunrise activist Nikola Yager says the group has a roster of “coaches” from various other movements like Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Streetwho volunteer as mentors for Sunrise’s organizers.

“This is unlike any other fellowship program,” Tacherra-Morrison said to the Sunrise activists at the opening of the boot camp.

The 60 activists, who are embarking on three- to six-month fellowships with the potential to stay for longer, make up the bulk of the full-time workforce of the Sunrise Movement. There are about 25 actual staff, like Tacherra-Morrison, but the distinction says less about the kinds of roles they play in the organization and more about their compensation. Staff are salaried, while fellows receive stipends.

More than 200 people applied to the program. Many of the fellows are recent college graduates or are taking a gap year to work with Sunrise. Others left jobs as congressional staffers or at other environmental organizations, like the Sierra Club. LaShelle joined last summer after her freshman year at Wellesley and has taken time off from school to continue working with Sunrise ever since. She lives in a movement house in Philadelphia with Aru Shiney-Ajay, another 21-year-old who’s taken time off college (in her case, Swarthmore), and several other Sunrise activists.

Half of the boot camp’s sessions were held in a makeshift classroom, and half were, naturally, outdoors. There were PowerPoint presentations, but they were distinctly millennial, with gifs and memes that underscored whatever point is being made. To illustrate futility, one slide featured a child trying and failing to eat a cookie while wearing armband floaties.

A key messaging guideline was “make it hopeful.” As another PowerPoint slide stated, “a winning story needs both a national crisis of historic proportions and a vision that tells us how to beat it.”

The Green New Deal is Sunrise’s policy vision, now taken up by its allies in Congress. It ties together the group’s twin goals of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and a federal jobs program, one that would employ millions to expand renewable energy generation and improve infrastructure.

“The right-wing media is doing a lot to tell the story of the Green New Deal from a certain perspective that is mostly around sacrifice: That Americans will have to sacrifice their cars, airplanes and hamburgers,” Fernandez, the Sunrise co-founder, said. “Fox News watchers are hearing a lot more about the Green New Deal than the average voter, and they’re not hearing about it in relation to climate change.”

At one point, the activists were asked to turn to the person sitting next to them and role-play as if they were a Fox News host interrogating a Sunrise activist. One man turned to the woman next to him and asked her whether she really wants to “drag this country into socialism?” She laughed and said, not entirely seriously, “Yes, that actually sounds great!”

Later that day, Shiney-Ajay opened a discussion of the Green New Deal by passing out a printed one-page summary of the resolution put forward a few months ago in Congress by Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts. Shiney-Ajay asked the room if there were any questions.

Where does the Green New Deal stand on the use of nuclear energy? one fellow asked.

“We don’t want there to be any new nuclear energy plants,” Shiney-Ajay began tentatively, before revising her answer to say, “Actually, I’m not sure if nuclear is considered carbon neutral.” She then asked the room whether they knew the answer.

How about carbon capture? another fellow asked.

“The resolution was created on a very short timeline,” Shiney-Ajay said.

These are the sorts of specifics—not legislative arcana but principles for how best to confront climate change—the movement has struggled to come to a consensus on.

“Sunrise’s role is not to be super caught up in the details,” Shiney-Ajay told the room. “We’re 18-, 19-, 20-, 21-year-olds who don’t really know policy.” It’s their job, she said, to lay out a vision while others write proposals that meet that vision.

When I asked Fernandez about this, she responded: “Everyday Americans, they want to know the impact of the policy. Most people don’t want to debate the actual policy or the years or the timelines or things like that. They want to know what the impact is, and that’s how they’ll make their decisions.”

***

Sunrise wants to play a major rolein the 2020 presidential election. It wants a Democrat who can not only beat Donald Trump, but also has signed on to the group’s vision of remaking the economy on a New Deal-era scale to fight climate change. To get there, it is pushing every candidate who isn’t already on board to become so.

As part of that effort, Sunrise is planning to host debate watch parties across the country, and it’s going to open movement houses in Iowa and New Hampshire. It plans for activists to accost candidates on the trail to ask them about their commitment to fighting climate change. “The way that we got Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker and so many other candidates to commit to the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge and feel the heat around the Green New Deal is relentlessly confronting them at all of their campaign events across the country,” O’Hanlon said. By bird-dogging public figures in this way, Sunrise intends, as the boot camp worksheets instructed the activists in training, “to elicit a public response from a powerful person through strategic questions or actions.”

Earlier this year, the group announced grand plans for a summit and protest in Detroit, timed to coincide with the second round of primary debates at the end of July. Sunrise has sent three demands to each candidate: To commit to prioritizing the Green New Deal, to reject money from fossil fuel executives and lobbyists, and to call upon the Democratic National Committee to host a primary debate dedicated to climate change—something that, so far, the DNC is assiduously refusing to do.

According to Sunrise’s latest count, 16 of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed the Green New Deal, 18 have signed the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge and 16 have called on the DNC to host a climate debate. Sunrise did not respond to a request fromPolitico Magazineto list which candidates have met which demands.

Detroit represents the perfect intersection of Sunrise’s twin theory of change, said Nicholas Jansen, Sunrise’s Michigan state director, who is 24. “Electorally and narratively,” he said, it has huge potential: the decline of industry and need for economic revitalization, Trump’s narrow margin of victory there in 2016, its racial diversity, its history of environmental disasters like the water crisis in nearby Flint.

The next iteration of the Sunrise fellowship is scheduled to begin six months from now, in January 2020 rather than June. The group hopes to recruit hundreds of new full-time organizers to work on primary campaigns across the country and then the presidential election in November.

“For our entire lives, we’ve seen politicians and the political establishment totally fail our generation,” O’Hanlon said. “I wish that the adults in the room were solving this crisis, but the reality is they aren’t. So now it’s on our generation to do it.”

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