#professor had never given out a perfect grade on that assignment in all 30+ years of teaching

[platonic-sponge]

just found out the most devastating news from my mother... when she was in college she had a project where she had to take a comic and turn it into a storyboard,, cut up the comic and all yk? and the comic she used was an original printing of the first Nightwing comic. THE FIRST COMIC. AN ORIGINAL PRINT. THE COMIC!!!!! SHE DESTROYED HIMMM!!!!! HOW COULD SHE!?!?!?

[adhdtoomanycommas]

ADHD, Gifted Programs, and Accidental Accommodations

So one big thing has been on my mind pretty consistently since I got diagnosed last year at the age of 30—why did it take so long to figure this out?  At no point in my K-12 education or my 4 year bachelor’s degree schooling did any teacher or counselor question or suggest I may have ADHD, despite the fact that I check nearly every single box on every diagnostic criteria (both inattentive and hyperactive!)

One obvious reason is sexism.  Pretty early in my reading on the subject, I learned that ADHD is dramatically under-diagnosed in girls and women. Partly this is because of different presentations, but a lot of it is just that the stereotype people have in their heads of what an ADHD kid looks like is always a boy.  

But the other big reason, and the one I want to talk about today, is the fact that one of the few ADHD diagnostic boxes that I didn’t check was “bad grades.”  So really, the question is, why weren’t my grades bad?

That’s not to say I was especially good at school work. My backpacks, desks, and binders were always a complete mess, and I NEVER did the homework.  I would do the big projects (at the last possible second, of course) but daily homework just straight up didn’t happen.   If there was time left at the end of class I would sometimes quickly do the homework for the next day, and occasionally jot down some approximation of it in the minute or two before class started, but when I was actually at home, I never touched it.

But here’s the thing with ADHD brains:  We can focus on things with no problem, as long as we find them interesting.  And I’ve always read quickly enough that doing the reading for class was usually interesting. And for the most part, the class content itself usually seemed interesting enough.    But probably most importantly, I consider tests interesting. There’s always been enough of a challenge racing-the-clock game-like aspect to them to me that I would stay engaged on the tests, and even if didn’t completely know the material, I was good at using logic to get a pretty good guess (like using all those tricks they teach for standardized tests—narrowing down the options on a multiple choice question, looking for answers in the other questions, etc.)

So even in the classes where turning in the daily homework counted for part of the grade (math and language classes mostly) I was usually able to scrape a B with only the occasional C thrown in,  and everything else was A’s.  

But part of my saving grace was the “gifted” classes.  I was very lucky that, despite not knowing about her own (probable) ADHD,  my mom knew enough about how she worked as a student to know that me (and my brother) really needed to be engaged and challenged in order to thrive.  Because of this, she advocated for us hard—she insisted we be allowed in my elementary school’s “gifted” program in kindergarten (based on our test scores of course)  even though the “gifted” program officially wasn’t even available until first grade.  And when we moved to a different state, she advocated for us again and got us included even though the “gifted” class was “full.”   She knew that nothing would make us fail faster than being bored in class, so she made sure that there was at least one day a week when we would be challenged and actually get to engage with material we found interesting.  

Aside,  despite how essential they were for me to thrive in school,  the entire concept of “gifted” programs and “gifted” kids is problematic as hell.  Half of the screening is basically just looking for class signifiers and seeing whose parents had enough free time to give them a head start (or whose parents have the time to advocate for their kids the way my mom did for me).  Not to mention there’s likely a massive racial bias. So in all this discussion of why I did ok despite my ADHD, it’s important to note that there’s a lot of privilege at play here determining who gets access to these types of programs.  

This is also why I keep putting “gifted” in quotes--  I don’t think there is anything inherent about academic ability. Also, academic ability, reading ability, testing aptitude, etc. are definitely not indicative of intelligence. Plus the entire concept of the measurability of intelligence is based on eugenics ideas, so clearly one should take the whole thing with a huge grain of salt.

Nowadays the term all the parenting blogs like to use for kids like me, with ADHD (or dyslexia, or autism, or whatever else) who also test well enough to be flagged as “gifted,”  is “Twice Exceptional”  which is a term that makes me immediately want to punch whoever uses it. Seriously,  it makes me gag.  Like, it doubles down on the “special” euphemism and seems entirely designed to make parents feel better about their kid without any consideration to how the kid feels.  No kid wants to be singled out, especially one who’s already probably pretty socially isolated (which I could digress about but that’ll be another essay for another day), and being Twice singled out certainly doesn’t help anything.  

But ultimately the teaching in the “gifted” class itself wound up being really good accommodations for ADHD. I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if they were better than the accommodations in the separate classes actually intended for kids with ADHD and other learning issues, though since I wasn’t diagnosed as I kid I can’t actually speak to that as I don’t have any experience there.  But in the gifted classes, firstly, we were given more specific subjects as opposed to the overviews we got in regular classes.  And it’s way easier to be engaged on specific subjects like ice age mammals, or the wreck of the Titanic, than it is to be engaged with a broad list of dates or categories.  We did logic problems that were presented as games, but that were indirectly teaching us the basics for higher level math. In 6th grade, we did research projects and got to pick our own subjects completely, so we could write about whatever we were hyperfixating on at the moment (mine was on medieval warfare as depicted in the Bayeux tapestry).   And if we happened to get excited and blurt out an interesting fact vaguely related to whatever was being discussed, that was likely encouraged instead of reprimanded like it would be in the normal classroom. This continued into high school, as honors and AP level classes tended to be a lot more discussion based rather than the top-down approach at other levels, as well as affording more opportunity to choose one’s own subjects.

The story you’ll hear from (or about) a lot of ADHD kids (especially undiagnosed) flagged as “gifted” is of hitting a wall at some point, academically speaking.  That did happen to me briefly, in middle school. We started being assigned a lot more long-term projects, and there was a bit of a learning curve while I figured out how to put things off Until the last minute and not Past the last minute.  But thanks to some patient teachers who believed in me (which I might not have had outside of honors classes), I managed to pull out of it and improve my grades (with the exception of the only report-card F of my entire academic career, from a sadistic gym teacher who seemed to think that enough berating would cure asthma).

Even more stories I’ve read and heard from people who were diagnosed with ADHD as an adult say they hit that wall academically when they started college—the first time they were really self-guided in their studies.  But again, there, I was saved by an honors program.  In this case,  it was the Honors Tutorial College,  a truly strange program at Ohio University.  I was tracked into HTC by one particular professor who very much wanted HTC to expand into the art program and decided that because I had both strong test scores and a strong art portfolio (and probably, lets be real, because I was the daughter of one of the other professors) that I was the perfect person to be the first student in the new program.

OU’s website describes HTC as “flexible curriculum and one-on-one tutorials with renowned faculty that allow your curiosity to take the lead in your education.” It’s rigorous, but comes with a lot of perks, like waiving certain gen-ed classes,  being able to take classes without first taking the required prerequisites,  and designing one’s own independent study classes individually with instructors.  And those perks are (as far as I know entirely accidentally) the perfect accommodations for an ADHD student (and probably pretty good for Autistic ones as well, based on some of my peers in the program).

A lot of the gen-ed classes I waived were ones I probably would have been bored in and thusly not done well.  Being able to skip pre-reqs meant that, for instance, for my English requirements I was able to take far more interesting classes like Shakespeare’s Comedies,  YA Lit,  and Playwriting instead of English 101, 102 etc.  If I wanted to learn about something in particular, I had help finding a professor willing to help me in an independent study/tutorial class.  Being the pilot of the program meant I was able to shape it so that I could get an art degree without ever having to choose one medium (which as far as I know is still an option for anyone pursuing an HTC Studio Art degree).  And at the end of the program, when we were required to complete a massive thesis project and paper (at basically graduate level), not only could I choose my subject to meet my hyperfixations, but I had individual help from a professor keeping me on task on the less-fun parts at every step of the way.  

HTC students are required to keep their GPAs above a high threshold. At one point one of my grades (in Latin class) was low enough to hurt my average, and I was called into HTC headquarters for a check-in meeting.  I was asked why my grade had fallen, and I explained that the class wasn’t that interesting (at that level it was mostly grammar) but that it was getting better as we were moving up into translating more actual historical material. That explanation was entirely accepted.  Imagine if “it’s not interesting enough” was considered a valid excuse for grades slipping for everyone, how much less stressful school would be for ADHD kids!

So ultimately it’s pretty much been having the luck and privilege to get myself flagged for “gifted” classes that kept my grades up throughout my school years.  Accidental accommodations have continued into my adult life as well. At my most recent office job, for instance (which I lost due to covid layoffs), I had a pretty hands-off boss who just didn’t care if I doodled, got up to stretch my legs every once in a while, and listened to audiobooks at my desk all day as long as the work got done.  

I didn’t need a diagnosis to get these accommodations, because they were given freely, which meant I was able to succeed even without knowing about my own ADHD.  If I had been diagnosed, and had had to ask for accommodations, I wonder if I would have done as well as bias against people with ADHD means people wouldn’t have expected as much from me.  

So if you’ve made it this far, I’ll ask for the same for others that I got for myself.  If you are a teacher (or a manager in an office setting),  I strongly encourage you to consider how to make your classroom, office, etc. more accessible in general, without someone having to disclose a diagnosis or be singled out for accommodations.  The biggest easiest one you can do is to allow (or even encourage) doodling in lecture settings. Even for neurotypicals,  there have been plenty of studies proving people retain information better when doodling, so everyone should know by now that someone doodling doesn’t mean they’re not listening.   If at all possible, encourage discussion and contribution.  Give everyone breaks to stretch and move around.  And give as much freedom as possible on what to learn about.  You might be surprised what people are capable of when these reasonable steps are taken to give everyone room to thrive.  

That’s all for now,  hopefully you got something out of this unwieldy ramble.   I’d be curious to hear if you’ve run into any accidental accommodations in your life and how they’ve helped.  Until next time!

[gwilymz]

Duality

Brian May x Reader

Summary: It’s the end of the semester and with final exams in a week, you’re desperate for physics help. Your professor recommends Brian May, a bright young student who is seemingly unsure, anxious and apprehensive at life. So when he invites you to a Queen gig, you’re shocked to see another side of him. 

Warning: DEFINITELY REALLY INAPPROPRIATE AND SMUTTY I WARNED YOU!!

This semester had taken a physical strain on you. You had transferred to a new university, and the pressure of making all new friends and having all new classes, which were much more strenuous than those of your old school, was weighing down on you, causing you quite a few breakdowns throughout the transition period.

Now, final exams were approaching quickly, and you had piles of assignments to complete, seemingly thousands of dates to memorize for your Renaissance history course, a few hundred thousand words to write in essays for your composition class, and worst of all, terribly complex equations to master for your physics class, all before next week. Why you had decided to take that class was beyond your locus of understanding, you weren’t majoring in anything of the sort, and you weren’t a very math or science enthused person.

All you did know, was that you were on the verge of failing the class, by the scarlet red marks which covered the top of each of your exams, the midterm being the worst score you had ever received in your life. You’d always worked hard in life and achieved grades you were proud of, for the most part, so struggling in a class was foreign to you and you hated the feeling. Worst of all, you didn’t want to admit defeat, to ask for help was the stripping of your dignity to you, and you were dreading the conversation you were about to have with your professor.

As the 10:30 AM lecture ended, your peers packed up their belongings, heaving their giant backpacks over their tired shoulders, shoving crumpled assignments and exams with near-perfect marks into their folders, making weekend plans with their friends. You slowly stood up from your desk in the front of the room, neatly putting your unsightly exams into your portfolio and sighing, before walking towards your professor’s mahogany desk, which was cluttered with red and blue ballpoint pens and coffee-stained papers.

“Um, Professor Prescott?” You inquired, taking a deep breath as you met her blue eyes.

“Y/n, I’m afraid if you need extra help today, I’m not able to do that. I’m awfully busy tonight with appointments, and the rest of the semester is booked with grading and conferences with other professors.” She looked at you with pseudo-sympathy, pursing her lips as she slung her brown leather teacher’s bag over her willowy shoulder.

“Professor Prescott, I really need help. I know I’m close to failing this course, and I need to do well, considering my position at this school depends on it. Please, is there any way you can help me?” You felt tears begin to prick the corners of your eyes and you scolded yourself for being so dramatic in front of an authority figure.

She sighed and tore a piece of yellow paper from a legal pad underneath a mass of quizzes and exams. “I suppose I can recommend a bright student of mine to help you. He’s in a course a few levels above this one. He does exceptionally well, and I’m sure he’d be happy to help you, y/n. Just tell him that I sent you, he tends to be very anxious.” She gave you a small smile and scribbled a name and a phone number before handing it to you, leading you out of the classroom and into the crisp fall air, wind nipping at your exposed skin.

“I hate making phone calls, Debbie.” You complained, rolling your eyes at your roommate, who was sitting across from you, eating a small sandwich.

“No, you hate admitting you need help, y/n.” She retorted, cocking her blonde eyebrows at you.

“I mean, you’re right, but I don’t want to get help from some random guy and it be awkward and terrible. Maybe I’m just not meant to be at this school.” You took a chip from her plate and mirrored the judgmental look on her face.

“Y/n, you’re going to call this random awkward guy and you’re going to get a passing grade on this exam, and you’ll be fine.” She smiled and cocked her head towards the pastel peach phone hanging by the humming refrigerator.

You scour your pockets for the paper and take it out, looking at the number before quickly dialing it on the rotary, holding the phone between your cheek and your shoulder as you tied your hair back. The phone rang only twice before somebody picked it up, muttering a confident, “Hello?” in a deep, raspy voice.

“Hello? Is this Brian May?” You were afraid she had given you the wrong number, this guy sounded self-assured, cocky, and nothing like the anxious, shy boy professor Prescott had described to you.

“And who would be asking?” He retorted.

“Um, my name’s y/n, Professor Prescott gave me this--your number because I need help with physics. Desperately.”

“I’m no Brian May, but I can help you with something else if you so desperately need it, sweetie.” He chuckles and you cringe at his words, before you hear the shrill sound of the phone being knocked out of his hand, and a loud, “ROGER” from the other side of the line, and then a raspier, “fucking teacher’s pet,” from who you assume to be this Roger character you were just speaking to.

You begin to hear shaky, heavy breathing on the other line, which sounded a lot less self-assured, and a lot more like who your professor described. “Hello?” He asked, barely above a squeak. You were about to answer him when he started apologizing profusely. “I’m-I’m sorry if my roommate--Roger--was offensive towards you or said anything inappropriate, he’s very, um, outspoken, especially with girls--not that that’s an excuse, but I’m sorry.”

You giggled a little, finding his care for your feelings charming and cute. “No, no it’s not your fault, you don’t need to apologize. I just-really need help with physics, and professor Prescott recommended you. If you can’t or don’t want to help me then I understand but--it’s worth a try.” You felt stupid for rambling but his nervousness was transferring onto your demeanor.

“Oh! I’d love to help you--uh, I’ve helped a lot of students study for this exam so I know more or less the material that’s on it so I can just teach you that stuff and not bother with the other material so as to not waste time--not that I don’t want to help I just don’t want to waste your time..um, what did you say your name was? I’m terribly sorry.” You heard loud giggling in the background of the call and mocking sounds from more than one person and you felt you face turn bright red.

“Oh, I’m y/n, where would you like to meet up? We can in about an hour if that works for you?” You licked your lips, waiting for his reply.

“I always go to this café on twelfth street when I tutor, it’s very ambient. And an hour from now would be perfect, y/n. It was nice talk-”

You interrupted him, tripping over your own words. “Wait-wait, Brian how will I know it’s you?”

“Oh, I never thought about that.” His voice was shaky yet impeccably smooth, almost sultry, even though you could feel the anxiety seeping through his tone. “Um, I will be sitting at the first booth you see when you walk into the door. I’ll be hard to miss.”

And then the call ended, and you reluctantly set the phone back onto the receiver, noticing that you had bitten your nails down quite a bit during the awkward encounter.

For the next forty-five minutes, you sat at the dining room table nervously tapping your patent leather boots against the oak floor, circling terms and concepts you weren’t sure about on the exam outline your professor had given your class weeks before. You sighed as your paper was soaked with red ink; you didn’t know a thing.

You stood in front of the antique mirror which was perched by the front door of your shared apartment, fixing stray strands of hair which had fallen from the back of your topknot. You quickly applied some brick-red lipstick and put some hoop earrings in, trying to look somewhat decent, as the stress you were under had made your confidence plummet recently.

“Isn’t this just a tutoring session?” Your other roommate, Alison inquired, raising her eyebrows at you, almost accusatory.

“I mean, yeah, but I want to look decent, Alison.” You retorted, grabbing your purse from the coat hook by the door.

“Who is this guy who’s tutoring you again?” Debbie questioned, fixing the hood of your coat.

“Brian May,”

“That sounds vaguely familiar for some reason.” Alison countered, as you left your apartment.

The November wind nipped against  your skin, making goosebumps form against your rosy skin. The streets were bustling with midday traffic and you walked the short trek to the café, listening to your boots click against the cement, and the occasional sound of a rust-colored leaf crunch beneath your feet.

As you reached twelfth street, your heartbeat began to quicken as you had no clue what this Brian looked like, you only knew the sound of his voice, and he didn’t give you much to go off of. You peered into the window which extended across the front of the old brick building, but the tint prevented you from looking too long. You walked to the door, a dark stained wood door with an old copper handle, eroded from years of use, cold against your already numb fingertips.

You turned the corner as you walked into the café, and saw a sea of dark, chocolate-brown curls atop who you assumed to be Brian May’s head. He was hunched over in concentration at the booth, working on a physics problem, you could see the familiar assignment, and the buttons of his calculator reflecting against the ambient light. He looked small, curled into the corner of the booth, so you were more than surprised when he stood to greet you and was towering above you, thin, jean-clad legs taking up most of his body. He wore a simple white button-up which had all but one button fastened. You could see the top of his bony sternum, and the sleeves to his shirt were messily rolled up, revealing muscular yet dainty forearms, and his fingernails were short, contrasting with his long, slender fingers, and had the remnants of white nail polish on them.

His face was even more handsome than you could have ever imagined, and you felt your face redden at the sight of it. His eyebrows were dark, and tapered off towards the tails, giving his warm hazel eyes a kind, almost ethereal look. His cheekbones were high and elegant, his nose aquiline and prominent and quintessentially masculine, stopping just above his light pink lips.

He gestured for you to sit down and you took your coat off hurriedly, as he scooted over to make room for you next to him. You felt nervous and uneasy, sitting next to this gorgeous guy, and you were glad you put extra time into your appearance today.

“Okay, y/n, what do you need help with?” He met your eyes only briefly, and blushed a little, flashing a toothy smile at the table where his large hands rested upon the paper he was working on.

You scoured your bag for the review sheet and handed it to him, giving him a nervous laugh. “Pretty much everything,” you answered, sighing. He handed you his pencil, which was chewed around the barrel, and you could see the embarrassment in his eyes; he regretted giving you the pencil. Your fingers touched briefly and he stuttered his words as he began to teach you the material. As the session continued you got closer and closer to each other, and he ordered you a snack and a coffee, and you noticed he accidentally drank out of your cup a few times, but you didn’t mind enough to tell him; you knew it’d embarrass him.

He was hunched over, helping you enter something into your calculator correctly when you asked him more personal questions.

“So, Brian, do you have another hobby, other than physics?” You joked, looking at him intently as he chewed on his pen, scribbling the answer on the messy paper in his illegible handwriting.

He met your eyes, and bit his lip lightly. “Um, yeah, I’m in a band actually. I play the guitar. It’s mostly a weekend thing, at pubs and bars.”

“Oh really? When is your next gig?” You fiddled with your own calculator, mindlessly pressing the buttons.

“Tonight, actually. At a pub just down the street. You’re welcome to come with some friends if you want.” He flushed pink and grinned at you, warmly.

“I’d love to come! What time is it?” You took out the paper with Brian’s number on it and flipped it over, ready to write the details. He took the pen from your hand and wrote the address and time in his best handwriting and then a small smiley face on the bottom corner, before folding the paper up and handing it back to you, along with the pen, which was impossibly small in his hands.

He looked at his watch and bit his lip. “I’m sorry y/n, but I actually have to go help set up the gig. If I don’t they will be mad. It was great meeting you, see you later?” He rubbed the back of his neck and you watched as a curl bounced back to its original position after being caught on a ring of his.

“Oh, of course, sorry for keeping you so long. Good luck, I’ll see you later. I’ll bring my roommates.” You stood up to let him out of the booth and he gave you an awkward kiss on the cheek, not knowing the correct etiquette for this type of situation.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As you walked back to your apartment, you couldn’t wipe the smile off of your face, even though the piercing wind was making your face numb to any feelings. You were excited to go to a concert, and excited at the prospect of having something other to focus on than final exams, even if it was just for one night. Your roommates noticed your heightened mood when you got back.

“How did it go? Was it terrible?” Debbie greeted you at the door and smirked at you when she saw your grin.

“Why are you smiling like that, yn?” Alison inquired, following behind Debbie.

“He’s super attractive, ok!” You replied, feeling your face burn up.

“Oh my god, really?” Debbie looked shocked.

“A physics tutor?” Alison looked doubtful.

“He’s cute--really cute. And he’s in a band. He’s the guitarist, and he has a gig tonight. He invited me--us. He said I could bring friends too.”

“A concert? Nice, y/n, you’re getting out there!” Alison playfully shoved you and led you over to the couch.

“What type of music is it?” Debbie sat down next to you and Alison.

“I’m not sure, but I’m guessing something acoustic and folky, I just got that feeling from him.”

“Cute,” Alison exclaimed. “Y/n got herself a catch!”

You unfolded the paper Brian had written on and looked at the time and address. It was 7:20 PM, and he wrote eight sharp on the paper.

“Shit, it’s in 40 minutes.” You quickly got up and changed your outfit, opting for something casual but classy.

As you left your apartment with your roommates twenty minutes later, you felt nervous once again, but the walk calmed you down. The atmosphere was different from what you expected when you arrived, there were a lot of people you recognized from college who were into harder stuff--druggies and metal-heads lined up at the door, and you felt overdressed when you saw everyone’s attire: layered band tees and flared pants which contrasted greatly with your outfit.

The line was surprisingly long and energetic, with hundreds of people packed onto the sidewalk mingling with the others, talking about new albums for bands you couldn’t begin to understand. The red lights from the inside of the bar cast a bright rosy red glow amongst the street, like its own personal spotlight. You vaguely heard drums and the tuning of a guitar as the door occasionally opened and closed as the bouncers let people in.

When the bouncer let you and your roommates in, you felt out of place. You weren’t expecting the venue to be so hardcore, there were crude posters messily hung about the building, and the lighting was dark and red, making everything glow with something akin to anger, making you tap your foot anxiously as you ordered a drink. You and your friends moved up to the front of the crowd, silently pushing through the sea of people to the front of the crowd. The bar owner climbed onto the stage and introduced the band, telling the crowd to get ready for Queen. They all cheered as if this wasn’t new, as if they knew what to expect. You were excited.

The drums matched your heartbeat, heavy and rhythmic, yet somehow a little irregular. You could feel the bass vibrate in your feet and the heavy riff of the guitar ringing in your ears. A flamboyant frontman came to the front of the stage, wearing an angelic white pleated white shirt, tight white pants and tall heels, with his nails painted an impossibly deep black. He grinned and danced around the stage, commanding the audience as he introduced the band members. As the light shone upon the stage, illuminating the other three men, your heart skipped a beat as you saw the same Brian you had nervously chatted with hours ago, the Brian who had an impermeable uncertainty about him, who wore conservative clothing, stuttering over his words, no matter how confident and skilled he was about the topic, towering above his bandmates, wearing a flowy, lacy top and a statement necklace which adorned his thin neck. His eyes were shadowed in dark makeup, his slender fingers now painted opaquely white, contrasting against his tanned, smooth skin. His eyes were smoldering, certain and beautiful, the eyeshadow complementing the golden brown irises.

As Brian saw you at the front of the crowd, you knew you were ogling him, but you couldn’t look away. You were awestruck by his presence, his stature, which was heightened by 3 inch heels. His eyes bore into yours and he didn’t look away. He licked his lips as he strummed the first cord of the song. Although the talent of the rest of the band was amazing, Brian was mesmerizing you with his every move. His nimble fingers struck every cord perfectly, strummed every string without fail, without taking his eyes off of you. His mouth was slightly open, and he briefly looked down to watch his own work, his fingers moving ridiculously fast over the strings and frets. He strummed with unduly passion and you could see the sheen of sweat covering his face as he turned on the delay pedal. During his solo he commanded the crowd with no words. His shoulders contracted as he moved about the stage, his long legs making him look angelic, but his smoldering look giving him an alluring, unexpected sinful appearance that was impossible to look away from.

He stared at you as he wrapped his fingers around the microphone singing into it forcefully as he played his guitar simultaneously. He and Freddie were a unit on the stage, moving together in something alike a dance between the musicians. He began to strum with more fervor, brows furrowed in concentration, breathing heavily as he swayed around the stage, entrancing the audience  as if he were a bonafide pendulum in human form, hypnotizing them with his pure talent. Your mouth was agape looking up at him, unable to believe this was the same Brian who was stumbling over his words hours before, punching numbers into an old calculator. It felt like the show had barely begun when Brian strummed the last cord, and the lights were cut, casting the four members in a shadow, shrouded by stage smoke. You were speechless as you turned to your friends, your face red dripping with sweat. You hurried to the bar and asked for a glass of water.

“So that was Brian?” Debbie looked at you with awe.

“I guess so. He was stuttering in a coffee shop with me 3 hours ago.”

You, Alison, and Debbie gushed about him as you sipped your water, unable to believe the duality of him, how a jean-clad physics tutor could command hundreds of people with an English sixpence and an old guitar. You felt a warm hand on the small of your back, the unmistakable feeling of a hard-on pressing into your back as you leaned against the bar. You quickly turned around only to realize it was Brian, motioning for the bartender to pour him a glass of water. He smirked down at you, his eyes shimmering, his cheeks flushed pink, pupils dilated so much that the golden brown irises you’d grown to love were invisible now.

He put his long arms around your waist, lifting you onto the barstool with confident ease, standing between your legs, your roommates feigning conversation four feet away.

“I want you,” Brian almost growled into your ear, nibbling at your earlobe, his hands rubbing your inner thighs, causing you to moan quietly into his own ear.

He pulled you off of the stool and held you close to him by your waist, almost as a shield for his boner as he led you backstage, where he took you into the greenroom, gaining attention and a few odd looks from his bandmates. He shut the door and didn’t even bother to lock it before he pushed you against it, pushing his hard thigh against your aching clit, holding your hands above your head with one hand, holding your waist tight with the other, hungrily kissing your neck as you ground yourself against his thigh, moaning into his mouth as he kissed you hard.

“I fucking need you.” He whispered, pressing his sweaty forehead to yours. You tangled your hands into his thick curls as he basically threw you onto the couch, set papers flying in every direction as he pulled your jeans down your legs, kissing your thighs as he pulled your panties aside, sucking on his own fingers and rubbing them against your heat, before entering 2 long fingers inside, making you arch your back. He used his thumb to rub your clit and you moaned loudly, which only spurred him on. His fingers were rough and calloused, the texture driving you crazy as he moved pulled your shirt up and quickly unclasped your bra, kissing your breasts and sucking on your nipples, hardened from arousal and the cold air of the room. He looked up at you and groaned at your face, contorted with pleasure as he continued to finger you hard.

“Fuck, Brian.” You whimpered, your legs shaking. He firmly gripped your thigh and held your hips down as he went faster, scissoring his fingers, making you cry out. You didn’t care if anybody could hear you at this point.

“Say my name again,” He commanded.

“Brian, please.” You moaned again, close to your impending orgasm. You looked at him intently, furrowing your eyebrows as he continued his movements, not taking his eyes off of you for a second. You came as soon as you felt the cold metal of his ring touch you, arching your back as you screamed his name. He took his fingers out of you, sucking them clean as he grabbed a condom from his wallet. You sat up and unzipped his pants, pulling them down his slender legs, palming his cock through his now-tight briefs. His head lolled back as you touched him, and he whimpered your name before handing you the condom. You tore it open, before pulling his briefs down, revealing his impressive length. You rolled the condom on locking eyes as you did. You could hear his heavy breathing as he pulled you up, kissing you feverishly on the mouth before flipping you over, pulling your hips up and lining himself up with your entrance.

“Are you ready?” He said against your neck.

“Please,” You pushed back into him, and he entered you, slowly at first, but then with more fervor, holding your hips as he pushed into you repeatedly, groaning into your neck as he held your ass. You buried your face into the pillows, unable to contain the pleasure.

“I’m so fucking close,” Brian groaned into your neck, causing you to clench around him. He came at the same time as you did panting as he fell against your back, unable to move for a few minutes, basking in the pleasure you shared together. He eventually pulled out, helping you get redressed, blushing as he put his underwear back on. He looked wrecked, his neck was covered in love bites, his face flushed, hair matted in some places and unruly in others, his chest still heaving as he handed you your panties.

“Do you still need help with physics?” He almost gasped as he pulled your panties up your legs, kissing right above your belly button, looking up at you with a huge grin.

[klausesdiego]

the trial of my gender by maggie c.

below is the personal essay i wrote for my creative nonfiction class. it documents and talks about my struggle with accepting who i am and how i identify in terms of gender. please read the whole thing and be kind. 

I sat at my dining room table, in the middle of the night, watching YouTube videos about people documenting their gender transition. It was fascinating to me, much in the same way that an outside observer would see any scientific study or conduction. To me it was simply that; I was an outside force that was interested in learning more about this topic. For research purposes. I was in 8th grade, so my fascinations tended to fringe to the edges of what was normal. I loved British panel shows, documentaries about serial killers, and even How It’s Made videos. Basically, I watched a large variety of videos that a typical 13 year old wouldn’t think to even look up. And one day I stumbled across the genre of gender transition videos. I believe I was looking up hair dying tutorials because this was around the same time I started experimenting with my hair color; regardless, I ended up watching voice comparisons, post-op surgery reports, and just vlogs in general of people venting their gender concerns. It wasn’t then and there that I realized that being transgender was a thing. I knew of it before that moment. But it was at the moment, the dining room deathly quiet and dark as night except for the illumination of my computer screen that I began to question my own gender.

Gender dictates everything in life. Everywhere you go, even from a young age, you are determined your worth through gender. And maybe it’s not as clear and forthright as you may think I’m trying to convey it as, but a closer eye can see that nearly everything in life, is based on gender. From an early age, even preschool or kindergarten, you are divided by gender. They tell the boys to be a group and the girls to be a group. And at that young age it is ingrained in everyone’s brain that gender is a binary. Gender is male or female and there is no inbetween. It won’t be until high school,l at least, that people will learn that sometimes people fall outside of those binary lines. Maybe you were a male who dressed or acted a little too feminine for everyone’s liking. Maybe you were deemed a “tomboy” simply because you prefered board shorts to bikinis. But at the end of the day, the people around you will label you as a gender that is either male or female. And that isn’t the case. If gender is a binary code of 1’s and 0’s, then everything that doesn’t fit within that code is labeled “nonbinary”. Gender non-conforming, transgender, androgynous, agender, genderqueer whatever you want to call yourself, there are things that lie beyond that binary.

Even when I was young, I didn’t know where I was supposed to fall in the gender binary. I knew that because of how I was born that I was deemed female. Assigned female at birth. That’s what some people call it. But it didn’t really seemed assigned. It didn’t feel like a government assigned label, like a social security number. It truly felt like a piece of my identity. At least, partially. When I was a freshman in highschool I finally berated my mom to the point where she let me cut my hair short into what I called a “pixie” cut. I tried to find the most feminine word for it, hoping that it would sway her opinion. This was soon after I learned the wonders of gender transition videos and watching them soon became a daily habit. In the end I looked like Justin Bieber from 2009, but I didn’t care. I was in love with it. My face was too rounded, my lips were too full. But my hair seemed right, finally. When I was a sophomore in highschool I came out to my parents as transgender. I wrote the date down in my calendar but said calendar has long since seen the trash can after one too many times of me cleaning my bedroom out of anxiety-ridden panic. I told them I wish I was born a male. And the funniest part about that? I don’t even think they remember. Sure, we had a good cry and my mom hugged me, telling me she would love me no matter who or what I wanted to become, but after that night, we never spoke of it again. My parents kept leaving little hints here and there that I might be a lesbian, saying things like “whoever you decide to marry” or “your future significant other”, but they never mentioned my gender. I was always going to be their little girl. And for a while, only my closest friends knew about who I was.

For a graphic design class I took in college, we had to construct a poster series about a serious issue that we were concerned about. The professor used his personal example of heroine usage in York, Pennsylvania and shared stories about it affecting his life directly. At this point in my life I was pretty confident in being unconfident in my gender, so naturally, I gravitated towards transgender-related topics. I learned that every 4 days a person who is transgender gets murdered. I made the poster in the style of a calendar with a bouquet of flowers every 4 days with the flowers being the color scheme of the transgender flag. I thought it was somber but albeit fitting. Learning that terrible fact was a shock for me. I knew that people who were transgender were discriminated, harassed, assaulted, and killed. But at that rate? It made me scared for my life. I was glad, for once in my life, that I presented myself as my biological gender. It was my safety net. Plausible deniability.

Rewind to high school, sophomore year to be exact, I started going by a different name, a more masculine name, online in gender support groups. My closest friend to me, the only one who knew about this whole thing, asked me if I wanted her to refer to me as a boy. I told her it didn’t matter. It did matter to me though. I wanted to be referred to a boy but I didn’t want to go through the hoops of having to change everything about my outer life to simply appease the gnawing feeling inside of me. At night, I wished that I could just wake up one morning with a different body and a different background. It didn’t matter to me how or why, I just felt that all of my problems with who I was would be solved if I had been more biologically male.

One of my friends from middle school is transgender. He started transitioning in his freshman year of college and I followed his journey of finding himself through Instagram. He seems genuinely happy and I feel happy for him everytime I see one of his posts. A different friend of mine, from highschool this time, thought he was a lesbian at the time, and it wasn't until he graduated high school that he decided he wanted to transition to male and be who he truly was. Even at college now, I know of people who have found themselves and their gender through time and experience. They say that cancer affects everyone because everyone knows someone who has been a victim of it. But this works the same for the transgender community. Nearly everyone knows someone. And if they say don’t, then they probably know a closeted person.

For a few years after sophomore year, I decided to let my gender identity go to the back burner, after all I had more important things on my plate: college applications and getting my driver's license. It wasn’t until I was a freshman in college, going to my first meeting of the Gay Straight Alliance that I realized I could reinvent myself No one here knew who I was. So when it came time to say my name and pronouns, I said my birth name, a name I still hold very dear to my heart, and the pronouns “they/them”. It may look like dipping your toe in the water to some people, testing to see if it’s the perfect temperature, but to me it was like taking a running jump and going into a cannonball. I was out. No matter what I was. No matter what I identified as. I was not cisgender anymore.

The idea of cisgender became a hot debate online in forum posts all around. Some people saw the shortening of it to “cis” as a slur much to the way that transphobic people would call transgender people tr*nny’s. But, in reality, it was just a label that society had created to say that your birth gender matched up with the gender you identified as. Most people are cisgender and for a lot of people their knowledge ends just there. Maybe they don’t even know the term cisgender at all. Maybe they are blissfully unaware of the struggles that people go through everyday just by existing. Maybe they just don’t care.

My cousin came out as transgender in an odd way. Through Facebook. She just posted briefly that she had begun hormone replacement therapy. She was already known as the extreme left-wing of the family. She had moved out to California to pursue a degree in gender studies. We all assumed she was just gay, not that she was actually a she. My sister-in-law’s sister came out as transgender, deciding to transition in her late 30’s despite having a wife and daughter. It was then that I realized that being transgender, having a different idea of who you are than from when you were born, isn’t just a fad that people on the internet were adhering to. This was a real thing. I felt justified in that moment. And my feelings felt like they had some grounding for the first time in a while.

In the gender support groups online, I was still a pretty active member at this point, I started going by masculine pronouns instead, still keeping my name the feminine one I was given at birth. This raised a lot of questions as to why I wanted to keep my name, but ultimately it boiled down to the fact that my name didn’t bother me that much. In reality, it just seemed to bother other people more. Like they couldn’t imagine someone by the name of Jennifer being a male. But I knew that it didn’t matter what other people thought of me. I started wearing exclusively sports bras, trying to smother my chest as best as possible. I was on my way to becoming who I wanted to be.

A lot of people who are transgender call their birth names their “dead names”. They see it as exactly that. That other person is dead to society. They have reinvented themselves much like how a phoenix rises from the ashes. While I had experimented with other names, more masculine names, as stated above, I felt a deep connection with my birth name and I didn’t see myself changing it anytime soon. But then again, my reluctance to not change my name was not really based on my affections for said name. Rather, it was me, once again, not wanting to go through the hoops and hurdles of having to change my outer life so much to fit the way I saw myself inside. In my head I knew who I was. What did it matter that other people saw something different? At the end of the day I know that by the end of my gender journey if I decide to change my name, or at least go by a different name, I would be perfectly fine with that. But my birth name would always hold a dear part in my heart.

I came out to my parents as bisexual in an unusual way. It was actually before I went to college. We were on a road trip to visit one of the colleges I had been accepted to and we stopped at a Burger King for lunch. It was bisexual awareness day and so I posted something on Instagram about it. My mom turned to me, and just said, “So, bisexual, huh?” And it was left at that. You might have sensed a theme that my parents aren’t the best with continuing communication by now. I think, some strange part of me deep down inside of me knew, my parents were glad that in their eyes I wasn’t “fully gay”. There was still a chance I would settle down with a nice Christian boy and have 2.5 kids with a white picket fence. And there still is that chance. But there is also the chance that I find a nice girl and we settle down, opting for cats instead of children. I remember, years later, talking to my parents in my living room about weddings. My sister was getting married and I dropped the bomb casually that I may end up marrying a woman. My mother, my closest friend in the entire world, started crying at this. It left me shattered in a way that I haven’t fully recovered from. She told me she would always love me but that she didn’t know how she would feel if she had to have my father give me away to a woman instead of a man. I left to my room heartbroken and sobbed myself to sleep that night.

After I came out to my parents as transgender, I did a lot of research about hormone replacement therapy and how parents view their children who were transgender. I would sit on the bus on the way home from freshman year high school and Google terms like “what to do if my child is transgender” or “female to male teen transition”. I was trying to research what I imagined my parents would be researching. In reality, we know that they never mentioned again to me so for all I know, they never did any research. For all I know they erased that day of their lives out of their memory. For me, however, it will be forever ingrained in my memory. It was the first day I started being true to myself. I was truthful when I told my parents I was transgender. I was truthful when I told my parents I wish I would have been born a male. I just left out the part where I didn’t actually want to live my life as a male. Not fully. I was nonbinary. Genderqueer. Agender. Or even, all of the above.

My experience with gender isn’t anywhere over and I don’t see it being over anytime soon. As of right now, I identify as nonbinary, dancing in some weird abyss of not being female and not being male. I see it as more of a burden than an identity. The fact that I can’t pinpoint exactly who I am is frustrating, but a lot of people don’t see it in the same way. That’s the magic of it being a spectrum; there will be people who feel everything at every point in said spectrum. Some people out there will love being nonbinary and the freedom that it gives them. Most people don’t feel like me. Most people don’t see being nonbinary as a burden or something at fault. But for me, I hope to one day find myself and who I truly am, even if that is what I already know.

When I first cut my hair short freshman year of high school, someone asked me if I was gay. Gay, in today's terms, sort of means the same as queer. Anything other than the normal. Gay emcompasses anything revolving around the LGBT community for some people. I told them no. It felt like cutting a piece of myself out. One of the deadliest sins a Christian can commit is denying their Lord. When asked if you are a Christian, a Christian must respond yes, or else they sacrifice their ticket to their afterlife. To me, answering no felt like I was denying myself that ticket to the gay afterlife. If asked that same question today, I would look them in the eye, think of the LGBT heaven I was destined for, and say yes.

[bglivoti-writing]

the textbook of happy (pt.1)

Entry One- 29 January 1998

    Personally, I believe this project is an illogical waste of time and paper. As are most assignments in secondary education, but that is beside the point. Your rules require us to write our “oh so secret and profound emotions” within a college ruled notepad to be handed in to you and graded. It is completely nonsensical, but I have no desire to, as my peers say, “flunk this fucking course,” so I will participate. Though, I warn you, the effort will not be at all genuine.

I’ll have you know that I am not one of those fanciful imbeciles, walking around in their own asperitas cloud of smothering joy and misery. Of course, those particular types of people fascinate me in all of their ignorance, yet do not mistake this fascination with actual sentiment, for they mean next to nothing to me in terms of actual emotion and caring. I do not mean this to sound cruel, though, frankly, I do not particularly care if it comes off as such. But there is power in honesty. So I intend to be perpetually honest. I wake up every day in a dorm with a brute who has far too much negative regard for me, constantly using the word “freak” in my presence as if it is the only fragment of the English language that his pea-size intellect was able to grasp. I then walk to the library and read the books that haven’t been opened for centuries. The ones coated in dust and various particles as an indication of their unimportance to the majority of the student body. I highly recommend that the school reinforce their reading programs, if only not to lose their investments in this room of knowledge, which was placed in a foolish building full of foolish people. Which was, of course, a foolish decision.

Currently, I am sitting in that spectacularly unused room, adjacent to a stack of such unappreciated books, which include the likes of Sheridan Le Fanu and The Order of Time. It is completely empty apart from myself and a few timid cockroaches. And I could not be happier.

Reaching up to one of the higher shelves, I am able to grasp a nearby textbook. Understanding the Mind: An Insight Into the Study of Psychology. Written by Jeremy Watts. I wonder what this Mr. Watts would say about my mind. Wonder if he’d dub me with the title “Freak” as well, and buckle over in hearty gasps of laughter with Mr. Freud and Mr. Jung. Though, I cannot answer that with any form of affirmation, as it was just another image concocted inside my diseased imagination. The only thing I can say with certainty is that no student taking Psychology at Kerouac Academy receives a passing grade.

First class of the day: Chemistry. Seeing as you have met your colleague, I do not think it necessary to explain the idiocy that is my professor, Dr. Wilkins. Though I am more intelligent in this topic, so I am not bothered by his presence. He is more humorous than bothersome. My dear professor is vaguely reminiscent of the jester of a king, never concerning himself with the expertise involved in running the kingdom, yet he is entertaining in his inelegant ways. He is rather like my classmates in that regard. Completely ignorant and inept, yet not entirely uninteresting. I cannot ask you to understand these observations, as you probably view your students as bright lights in the vast expanse of secondary education. But I am quite certain that your opinion would begin to shift had you ever been smacked upside the head with a 109,935 page textbook. I’m sure it seems as though I am upset by the torment I am perpetually subjected to, when the in simplest of terms, it is really “all in a day's work.” I am disinterested with the acts of others, even when I am the subject of their attentions. And yet, I find a certain fascination in the pleasure’s of the ignorant, the motivations of the mundane. Where do the boundaries of analytical logic begin within human decision. When is it asphyxiated, smothered, and replaced with an animalistic desire for the stimulus of emotion which we all so desperately crave. Or so I have noticed. I find throughout my observations, the experience of feeling causes rather the same symptoms as one would witness after the consumption of a collection of amphetamines.  The central nervous system is washed with excitement, resulting in the recipient of this pleasant emotion to become almost giddy. Euphoria spikes, energy levels increase, and overall confidence rises to a level of ensured stupidity. Most people can quite literally experience a “high of happiness.” And yet emotions have never been illegal, no matter how intrusive they can be upon one’s ability to make reasonable decisions. Of course, I am speaking hypothetically, as it would be impractical to outlaw one’s emotions unless we lived in a blatant dystopia, where such acts of psychological tampering would not be considered inhumane. When, in actuality, it is quite frankly the opposite.

Entry 2- 30 January 1998

         You never specified just how long our entries had to be. I intend to use this to my complete and total advantage to get through this Shakespearean nightmare of an assignment.

Respectfully,

Alan Trimble

Entry 3- 31 January 1998

          Mr. Jacoby is a fatuous twat. In case you are unaware, a twat is a slang term for misshapen vagina. I hope you find this definition, as well as my commentary on another of your coworkers, useful. Good day.

   Entry 4- 1 January 1998

            Freud was dimwitted fool, and why we quote his theory as gospel astounds me. I find his work entirely incorrect and frankly lacking all reason in its creation. Sex is merely an animalistic desire fueling advances and sparked by emotion and euphoria which clouds the brain and fogs the ability of analytical decision making. Yet, it does not replace it, and it does not control it. In conclusion, Mr. Sigmund Freud was a half-wit.

Entry 5- 2 February 1998

    A student has arrived from Germany today. He seems ordinary enough, and if he was not a new face in this bustling phalanx of pubescence that I am forced to call my peers, I doubt I would’ve noticed him at all. He is, of course, frightfully uninteresting.

I have just learned that his name is Jan Pfeifer. A well-suited name, as apparently he plays the flute in his spare time. This “Jan Pfeifer” also happens to be a member of my Calculus lesson, though I have not heard him utter a single phrase beyond that of, “Hallo mein name ist Jan Pfeifer,” and a rather broken version of, “I am looking forward to being a member of this class.” While the second was not by any means a linguistic nightmare, my simple-minded classmates found the concept of a person not speaking perfect English entirely outlandish. Yet, the irony present in that shock, considering the amount of proper communication skills lacked by the majority of the people in this school, is overwhelming in its prominence. Perhaps I will not include this Germanic enigma in my social criticisms for the time being.

Entry 6- 5 February 1998

            Please inform me of the hiring process of this particular school, as I find myself constantly questioning the requirements needed to become a member of the teaching staff. It seems the majority of the adult residents have hardly passed primary education.

Entry 7- 4 February 1998

    I have received a proper introduction to our Mr. Pfeifer, the school’s resident Aryan spectacle. It occurred half way through the day, as I sat down to force feed myself the culinary atrocities that this fine establishment has to offer. Based purely on the food which was sat in front of me, I can only assume that the chef was discovered trembling inside of a mold-covered cardboard box, soaked in rain and sewage, awash with an array of sexually transmitted diseases, living off the finest of rat feces and waste. He was then dragged to his feet by our headmaster, dusted off, handed an apron and put to work. I suppose it would be considered charitable to aid this withering sack of a man in his effort to rebuild his crumbling ruins of a life, yet why I must be subjected to this vomitous attempt at nutrition is beyond me. Even though this inference is, to my knowledge, a fictitious description of events, it does not change the truly unpalatable nature of this slop.

Back to the matter at hand, while I was choking down the cow shit this school calls food, I was approached by the one and only Jan Pfeifer. Given the lack of spots available in the commissary, and the constant amount of seating options in my general area, it was an inevitability that we would soon be in contact. Though, generally, a self-assured individual such as myself is portrayed with a certain negativity. And this negativity has been known to act as a repellent towards others, a type of warning of my indifference towards their well-being and overall existence. In the grand scheme of things, this phenomena works all the better for me, as the general public has nothing of value to say to me anyways, so their interactions would be a mere waste of time which I could be occupying with much more worthwhile activities. Yet, my air of arrogance did not deter the German. He plopped down into the seat next to me, looked at me briefly, and then proceeded to dig into his slop-pile of our questionable food. Only after the first two bites, which somehow seemed to satiate his need for sustenance, did he look me in the eye again. And with that almost disconcerting stare, he stuck out his left hand and said a hello. I shook it, as I was taught that is what one does when one is introduced to another, though I have never had a chance to practice this. After that, we spoke. I can’t quite remember the last time I casually spoke to anybody else as if they were my equal. Though I would never consider Jan an equal, I consider him to be the closest I have come to such. But, maybe, due to my constant exposure to ignoramuses and twats, my standards for decent human behavior has dwindled throughout the years. I am not quite sure that I have ever had the pleasure of meeting a decent human being before, so I am certain my standards were quite low to begin with. And with thirty minutes of conversation, lunch was over, and so was our time to interact. He seemed to be engaged, and I certainly was. Perhaps I shall talk with him again, should the chance arise.

Entry 8- 5 February 1998

            An opportunity has presented itself. And we did not speak. I admit to being a tad troubled by this, though I’m sure it does not matter.

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[rtirman-blog]

36.   A Notre Dame Junior

I forgot to tell you about being chosen by St. Ed’s Hall to represent them in the Annual Tennis Tournament which was held before the end of the school year.  Also, I think it is important to mention,  I was feeling more and more a part of Notre Dame, i.e., my existence, and what I did, made a difference in the school. First an off-campus student, to a St. Edwards resident student, to a representative of St. Ed’s.

 So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to return to my tennis match, as the St. Ed’s representative. My opponent was none other than Jim Van Petten, the off-campus tennis representative. As I wrote about earlier, Jim was a legend at Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Illinois and an emerging Notre Dame Legend.  As for me, although not perfect, I was able to get the ball over the net. That match was a joke. Every shot I took was returned with sky high lobs.  Every time I got a chance to slam the ball onto his side of the net, back it came like a Ted Williams home run.  This would continue until I made the mistakes of slamming the ball into the net, hitting the ball out of bounds, or missing the ball with my most powerful swing. I’m sure, by now, you have guess the result- 6-0, 6-0!   Jim is, even today, one of my best friends on earth. But we have never played tennis since then.

 Now onto Dillon Hall and my junior year. My room, 104, was in the front of the building with a lot of pedestrian traffic right out the window.  If there was a girl on campus, I would have spotted her in a second. Going to an all-male school may not have been smart.  By my junior year, I had a daily ache in my stomach, hoping to see a girl sometime in the day.  My roommate, Roy Martinello, was in no better shape.  Academically, I was signed up for 15 credit hours- Organic Chemistry and Lab, Economics, Medical Ethics, Advanced Composition, and Freehand Drawing.  My schedule may seem light, but I did not take to Organic, especially the lab. I can’t honestly tell you anything about Medical Ethics, but I do remember Organic.  First of all, my professor, Dr. Emil Hoffman, was considered the hardest prof in the College of Science, and maybe the entire University.  I took a minimum of six pages of notes at each of his lectures.  Worse than Organic lectures was Organic Lab.  Like every chemistry laboratory, we would go through a safety lab which required a report. This was a repeated procedure for all my chemistry labs in high school and college.  The first one I ever did seemed like a waste of my time, as did every other safety lab and report.

 The second session of Organic Lab was on “recrystallization”.   Each student was given a compound which we were to dissolve, recrystallize, and identify. We each had a different compound to find a solvent which would dissolve it, then boil it off to recrystallize it, and then identify it…or something of that nature.  About midway through the third session of the recrystallization exercise, I had finally found the solvent, recrystallized the compound, poured it the through litmus paper, and captured a large recrystallized amount of the original compound.  I must tell you, there was also a large amount of the compound all over my new white lab coat, which now appeared to have been in the midst of an exploding rainbow. Mostly, it was yellow, the color of my compound.  But there were splotches of red, orange, green, blue, indigo and violet.  All in all, it was three boring weeks of trying to dissolve bits of my compound in every acid and base known to mankind.  You would think of all the explosive things that could happen in an organic lab, something exciting would happen…but no, it was a bore. However, we did have one student start an acetone fire, which was put out quickly.  Wow! One little fire in nine hours in the lab.

 I had my compound drying out on fresh litmus paper.  I would then calculate the percent of yield, and then turn it in to my lab instructor to measure percent and purity of yield.  As my recrystallized compound lay out on my lab table drying, my lab instructor was returning our graded safety lab reports from our first lab session. My report was fairly extensive, perhaps four or five pages inserted in a binder.  Instead of placing my report gently on the lab table, he held it about a foot or two above the table and let it drop flat.  I screamed, “Noooooo!” as the wind created on the table top lifted and flipped over the litmus paper with my crystallized compound.  Why did you do that? It took me three weeks to recrystallize it!  He told me to scrape it up, and turn in whatever I was able to save.  After my compound was returned to me, I did get permission to continue, with the added comment that my yield was small and had lots of impurities.  Any enthusiasm I had for that lab, organic, and, for that matter, chemistry, was gone.

 My job turned out to be very helpful to me.  One day while working at the soda counter, I looked up to the person waiting to order, and to my surprise, I was facing Eric Smitner, my high school Latin teacher. He had taken a position at St. Mary’s College.  Even though in high school it took me three years of Latin to get credit for two years, he was one of my favorite teachers at Freeport High.  He was genuinely glad to see me, and praised my accomplishments of which he always knew I was capable.  That brief interaction, was a needed shot in the arm.  I was feeling proud.

 Earlier, I told you about my boss, Jim McCaraghy (“the g is silent like p in swimming”). He was the person who played poker with Knute Rockne, every week.  Jim sang my praises to the powers that be, resulting in a dining hall job with twice the hours. Early each evening, I would go down to the basement of the Dining Hall, pick up a white jacket, and got on line to pick up my supper and eat for free.  Financially, that was very helpful.

 The dining hall was somewhat like the dining hall at Hogwarts, where Harry Potter learned the skills of wizardry.  Just like at Hogwarts, at the end of the long dining hall was an elevated area for a table of the “higher ups” overlooking the entire dining hall.  Yes, the priests ate at that table.  One day, while eating my supper, there was heard across the dining hall, “THERE IS NO GOD!”. Was that booming voice from the Heavens? Or from an amplifier?  You bet those priests were looking hard to see who yelled that out.  Suddenly, from somewhere in that hall came this, “YOU ARE WRONG, THERE ARE MANY GODS!”  Much to the chagrin of the clergy, the place went up in hysterics. The culprits were never found.

 My job, in the dining hall, was to clear off the tables and then help wash the dishes. I was assigned to wash the dirty glasses by dipping them into water, place them face down on spinning brushes, and then place them in a tray to be sanitized by our big washers. At my station, I had a great view of a town girl who worked in the kitchen, as well.  Plenty of times, I’d be looking at her, rather than paying attention to my work.  While looking at her, I would either miss the spinning brushes or hit them awkwardly. One time, I even broke a glass. Luckily, I was not hurt.

 Fast forward to my advanced composition class and another legend- John Ryan.   Although I am uncertain, Mr. Ryan could have been a member of the poker playing Notre Dame greats!  Nonetheless, I knew I had the absolute best English teacher in the University.  The class met T-R-S at 11:30 A.M.  On Saturdays on which there was a home football game, we met at 8:30 A.M.  Since on those Saturdays the campus was heaving with family members, girlfriends, etc., our class was open for guests to attend. About a week before one of those home game Saturdays, Mr. Ryan assigned us to write am 800- word definition. What happened to me on this assignment never happened to me before nor any time after. The greatest composition professor in Notre Dame’s history, with a classroom filled with students and parents, read an outstanding paper that defined “A Gawky Glasswasher”.

The place was in hysterics as Mr. Ryan read my paper.  Actually, much of it was an explanation of the definition with which I finally ended. It went something like this:  “A gawky glasswasher is a dishwasher whose job it is to put dirty glasses on spinning brushes in order to get them clean, yet keeps dirty glasses dirty by staring at pretty girl workers thus missing the spinning brushes…”  When he finished reading the paper, I received a standing ovation, from students and parents. This was a special event for a someone like me whose ego needed stroking…my first, and last, A-plus English Composition paper.  It probably helped raise my final grade to an 85...a solid C!

I got that same grade in Econ and Freehand Drawing.  Organic and Medical Ethics, 70 and 72, respectively.  In all my pre-med studies, the only science in which I got a halfway decent grade was an 84 in physics, in my sophomore year.  Oh, I did get that 97 in inorganic after failing it the semester before. The challenge of college, for me, was staying and moving forward in pre-med, despite knowing I’d have a zero chance of getting into med-school.

 Do you remember back in high school when I lost my cool and kicked the basketball high above the gym hitting a window.  Well, that me showed up while I was cleaning tables in the dining hall.  I was adept at picking up 5 glasses at a time on each hand. As I was doing that, a couple of glasses slipped out of my hand and rolled across the table…nothing broke.   A supervisor, who was standing close by, suggested that I just pick up two or three glasses at a time.  I took offense, and I told him he could just go f--- himself!  His name was Ziggy, and he was in charge of the dining hall.  I got the boot on the spot!

 Within a few days, I was selling women’s shoes in the downtown store of J.C. Penney.  I had to agree to work through the Christmas holiday, their busiest shopping time of the year. Since the Spring semester started about 10 days into January, I figured I could work there over Christmas followed by a ten-day vacation back home.  I clocked a lot of hours at Penney’s.  Part of the time, they had me working in the boy’s clothing department. I actually did okay as a salesman.

I left for home before the new year with plans to rest.  As soon as I boarded the train, I felt sick.  I ended up spending my entire time off sick in bed with the flu. Then back on the train to face the Spring semester of my junior year.

[hollywoodx4]

Sticking With the Schuylers (40)

(Not only did I stay up way too late for my schedule to write this, but I also woke up earlier this morning to finish it...it wouldn’t go the rest of the day undone. I mean, I’m a teacher and it’s the end of the year, I don’t have anything glaringly important to do....no way....)

If you haven’t given this story a chance...I mean, I’m not saying you’re missing out but it might seem daunting, but don’t we all like a little emotional roller-coaster once in a while?

1  2  3  4   5   6   7   8   9   10   1112   I  13  14   15   16   17   18A  18B   18C  I  19   20   21   22   23   24   25  26   27  28   29   I  30  31  32 33 34 35  36  37  38  39

Tagging: @linsnavi  

Warnings: This story is pretty heavy on mentions of both physical and emotional abuse.

               “I need to talk to you.”

               Eliza comes home on Wednesday night with an unreadable expression, somewhere between somber and passive. It’s later than usual; the inclusion of therapy has not only imposed on their night, which they’ve wordlessly moved to Tuesdays instead, but it has also taken a chunk of her relaxation away as well. She kicks off her snow-infested boots at the door, peeling off layers with slow and careful movements. He can’t tell if she’s exhausted or tense, mulling over her words. Her keys hit the countertop with a clang and she looks up to meet him.

               He’d risen from his chair in the office immediately upon hearing her voice. It barely even reached the room, where he’d been holed up working on a case study he’d been buried in for days. Her voice falls flat. There is a worry that sinks into his heart, cold and unforgiving, and he hesitates at the door to watch her. She lets her coat hang from her hands for a moment, fabric brushing the floor before it falls completely. The knit pattern on her scarf is traced by tentative fingers that run along its ridges, carving out each space as if the feeling of wool chilled by winter weather is something she needs to memorize in this very moment. It feels like an eternity by the time she has completely shed all of her winter garb, leaving it in neat piles by the door as she finally looks up at him.

This week had been her third session with Lisa. Eliza had warned him-as Lisa had warned her-that things would only get harder before they got better. Then she’d shaken it off, pegged it as a cautionary tale not meant for her. She’d been so sure that she’d be able to make it, to leave therapy in the room and continue on with her life as if it were completely normal. It was a mistake to think so optimistically. The night had been especially tiring; ‘we’ll leave that for the next session’ had finally caught up to her, the pass cards completely used up. There were too many things to talk about in the space of time they had to be lingering on every minute, pleasant detail within her life. She’s acutely aware of the fact that she won’t be able to move on unless she begins to talk about the bad-the unpleasant. Still, wanting and needing had become two very different places in her life, distancing themselves more every second. There’s no room for compromise. Need has to come now before want or wish or hope. This premise aches, and stings. Eliza is exhausted.

               She sinks into the couch expectantly, patting the space next to her as if she’s giving herself a death sentence. Her face has fallen considerably, eyes cast to the floor and fingers fumbling idly in her lap.

               “So I don’t want you to think that any of this is your fault, okay?” Alexander nods, curious. Eliza draws in a breath-a shot of courage, and holds it in place for a moment before speaking. She has the floor. Alexander is attentive and curious and silent, poised no doubt with the perfect turn of phrase on the tip of his tongue. Her stomach turns with nerves that roll in a docile storm, just enough to shake her confidence.

               “Lisa talked to me last week about a decision I had to make and I ignored her, thinking it would just go away. It hasn’t, and she keeps giving me all of these drawn-out reasons why we have to have this talk and at first I didn’t think it was necessary but the more she talks the more she changes my mind…”

               “Okay, it’s alright, we can work this out. I can get another job, we don’t have to have an office. You can even keep student teaching, right?-because nine months give or take would bring us to September, and that might be kind of hard but if we just sit down and talk about it we can figure this out. And then your parents-shit, your parents-they can, uh, we can just sit down with them, and have a rational talk, and you might need to cry if I’m not already crying and if your dad doesn’t murder me, and a baby’s a lot of work but I think we can do it,”

               “-Wait, Alex, slow down!” She’s nearly laughing now, alarm in her eyes and the hint of a smile playing at her lips. She moves her hands from her lap to his shoulders, tracing tracks along them as his heartbeat and his scattered mind settle. “I’m not pregnant.”

               The release of tension in Alexander is visible; his shoulders drop, his hands stop sweating. He nods his head, fervently, letting the words wash over him in excess until they finally click in his mind.

               “Good-okay, not good as in I wouldn’t support you if you were, but good as in we haven’t even had this conversation yet, and this is not the right time to be raising a child, and we have careers and family and,”

               “-It’s okay, Alexander, I understand. I’m not offended. I mean, could you imagine my father if that were the case?” He had. He’d imagined it all, right down to each gruesome detail within the thirty-second span of time he had been stumbling over his words ready to provide for her. Being maimed by Phillip Schuyler after impregnating his daughter three months into their relationship isn’t exactly the kind of rapport he wants to have with the man. He’s fine continuing the simple chats they’ve had thus far, those are enough to carry him into his good graces.

               “I-uh, I did have something important to talk to you about, though.”

               May; the school year has ended, and somehow Eliza has managed to complete every task and assignment on time, and in good reflection in her grades as well. She sits on the porch of her parents’ house with Angelica, looking over her final grades with a sigh of relief. She is genuinely surprised that she passed the year. Academically, Eliza did not find it too difficult. In fact, she excelled far above the others with her knowledge taken from volunteer work and tutoring, bits and pieces of knowledge coming in handy in her development classes. Even in math, which had proven to be her worst subject throughout school, she managed to pull a grade above her expectations.

               The second semester had been trying. Angelica can see it reflected in the dropping marks, the weight of Eliza’s GPA dipping her down to just barely missing the dean’s list, which had been her goal all along. She had tried to explain, for the fifteenth time, that making the list was exceptionally hard-especially at a school like Columbia. Eliza wouldn’t listen. Watching her little sister was like watching herself through a mirror. The high expectations did not come from their parents as much-no, Phillip and Catherine wanted their daughters to succeed by trying their hardest, not by breaking their backs. This is something internalized, built into their mismatched DNA in a harrowing representation of perfectionism that fought with their minds on a daily basis. It isn’t enough that they both are going to Columbia. It isn’t enough that they’ve made high marks their entire year. To Angelica and Eliza, there is always a higher goal to be met in academics. Angelica has achieved it for the third year in a row. Eliza has missed on her very first try.

               Angelica knows the pathway that had taken her younger sister from straight A’s to lower A’s and B’s. This is entirely a fault that cannot be placed on Eliza, who had spent late nights trying to complete school work and come to class late covered in concealer with sorrow-ridden eyes. From the moment she had moved in with James, her grades began to slip. Her assignments grew harder. Her life grew harder. She had held her head up like a warrior through it all, persevered and battled herself to keep her spot at the school she had been dreaming about for years on end. It’s her family’s legacy, to move from Manhattan Prep to Columbia. It’s their dream to keep the dignity and respect alive through the deeply-rooted tradition. And she had almost lost it-according to her own thoughts.

               “You didn’t do badly at all, Eliza. Look-your Health & Nutrition professor left a note that your final project on bringing sustainable choices to school lunches was inspired. Actually, you have a lot of comments on here.”

               “I guess.”

               “Eliza, you got really good grades for your first year at Columbia. And for everything you went through,”

               “-No.” Her voice is hollow, cracked. Eliza grabs the paper transcript from her sister’s hands, burying it in her lap without sparing a second glance. She’d already memorized the marks, anyway. “We’re not using that as an excuse. We broke up in March. There’s no reason I shouldn’t have been able to higher grades than this.”

               As summer slowly crept into view, the thought of final marks never left Eliza’s mind. There were days where she seemed fine; that she was no longer pained by her experiences and could not even remember what she had been so upset about. But most days she found that time hung suspended in front of her, where the beginning prickling heat of summer took over the streets. The world was surrounded in humidity that brought crowds stumbling inside and packing the subways with sweaty bodies pressed tight together. In this chaos Eliza never stopped. She threw herself back into the things she had missed in a manic sort of frenzy that packed her schedule from dawn to dusk. Angelica went from seeing her every time she walked through the door from work to only once in a while, in sparing moments in the holes of her schedule. And when she did see Eliza-when they sat together at brunch, or spent a moment in the kitchen over some tea and cookies-she was just an average human being with an over packed schedule and a sleep pattern to match.

               Angelica knew better-she always knows better.

               There’s one morning that Eliza doesn’t leave the house, at least not at the crack of dawn. Angelica and John have both woken up, and are sitting at the little breakfast nook in the corner of their kitchen. John pours over one half of the newspaper while Angelica takes the other. They sit in a peaceful sort of silence, the sound of birdsong and small sips of hot coffee the only accompaniment. They hear Eliza before they see her. This morning she is a slow, methodical clicking of oxford flats against hardwood. John looks up from his mug to greet her and is met with blinking eyes and a grin painted unsteadily on well-made features.

               “You’re here late.” John speaks up first, eyes lifted just above the crease of the newspaper. She nods. Although the conversation has invited her further into the kitchen she does not move-her legs won’t will it. Instead she hovers in her place, staring at the couple at the table with an inward plea she doesn’t even realize she’s sending. Prod. Her mind whispers the words, begging. Ask me what’s up. Help me.

               “Come sit, Bets.” Angelica pats the space next to her on the bench of the nook and scoots over to accommodate her younger sister, holding out a piece of toast with an inviting grin.

               “So what are you up to today?”

               “I-uh, I'm meeting someone for lunch. Actually, that's kind of why I'm…I wanted to ask…well, I got a call from James this morning.”

               “And you didn't answer it, because you're a smart girl.” Eliza’s face falls, eyes cast to the table. She picks at a piece of slightly burnt toast, no longer hungry anymore. Her stomach churns with the frown of disapproval and immediate flurry this sends both Angelica and Church into.

               “Tell me he's not the friend you're going to lunch with.”

               Another silence. The slow burn of their eyes on her-judging, accumulating facts that aren't quite there yet-that burn singes thin skin, leaving reddened marks in its place. Eliza sits under their watch. This is all she can do, as if they have magnetized her to the breakfast nook and the burnt toast.

               “Elizabeth Schuyler, I know you're smarter than this.”

               “It's not as bad as it sounds; he's getting help. He checked himself into a counseling center for abusive men. He's going to get better. And in order for him to be able to do that, his group leader told him that he has to meet the mistakes of his past. He has to reconcile.”

               “At the cost of all of the progress you’ve made? I don’t think so.”

               Angelica stares down her younger sister, who peers back at her through widened eyes. Eliza pushes strands of hair back into the bobby pins that hold them from her face before her hands drop. She picks at the fairly fresh coat of mint green nail polish, wincing as it begins to chip away. She hates painting her nails-the effort isn’t nearly worth the week they last, if that long. She does, however, love the first day with a new color on. Matching the polish to her clothing, looking down and admiring blues or pinks or nude tones had become one of the simpler pleasures of her life. And each time she began to chip away at it, she’d simply start anew. It’s easy to wipe away one round of polish to make room for the next. She does it without a second thought.

               She wonders, then, if this effort would be worth it. Angelica continues to stare, keeping her rooted to her seat at the table with an iron grip made only with the fire of an older sister’s protection. Her heart is racing, then, running through the options although her mind has already been made up. The implications of her actions are real-she had felt them before, that day in March. There is not a part of her that wants that to happen again. However, there is still a draw. As much as she would never admit it, to her sister or to John or even to herself, hearing James’s voice on the phone had brought her back. There were times, simpler times, where she had been happy with him. In the beginning he’d hold her close to his side. He’d link her arm through his, walk to a bench in the smallest green oasis in the city where they would just sit and talk. In the beginning, James was gentle. He’d speak in kindness, with those hazel-green eyes that pop against chocolate, freckle-dusted skin. The summer introduced him with a sunny disposition and a warmed heart. As the weather approaches that mark again, reminiscing on that same heat has spun Eliza’s head around and back again. Suddenly, November through March are just faded memories that run on a plane of non-existence. Suddenly, there is only summer-the sweet, gentle warmth of James Reynolds before the lack of heat had turned him sour.

               As long as one looks hard enough, there is hope in every moment. Eliza hitches herself to that belief as she finally meets Angelica’s eyes, her own full and round and ready to battle.

               “God, Angelica, I’m not saying I’m going to marry the man tomorrow. I’m saying that this is an important key to his healing. I’m not going to deny him the chance to turn his life around. He’s taken the first steps. I have to do this.”

               “No, you don’t!”

               “Angelica!” She shouts her sister’s name, then, a voice unlike her own rising from the depths of her diaphragm in an uncontrolled and sudden burst of anger. Both Angelica and John sit back in their seats, then, watching as Eliza picks herself up from the table. She paces the room for a while, force-pushing the optimistic thoughts back into her mind. John shuffles the paper. Angelica’s mug clinks against her plate. They’ve reached a stalemate, Eliza unwilling to go without the permission her sister will not give. Each with a different understanding of the situation, this is the first real fight they have gotten themselves into.

               “I could go with you.” John speaks up, then, in his calm and subdued manner. He glances between the sisters, offering a peace-a compromise. His girlfriend’s eyes are lowered, angered and betrayed. She does not interrupt. There is always a judicial sense in whatever John Church has to say. Quiet by nature, his speech is thought out and significant when given.

               “I’ll hang out at a different booth-close by, to be safe. This way, you can still talk.” Angelica has loosened, slightly, but the tension is still visible in her tight shoulders and unmoving limbs. John turns to her, a hand on her hand. “If things start to go badly, I step in. He won’t even know who I am. I’ll wear a hat or a fake beard or something if that makes it any better.”

…

               May 14th is an overcast day. The clouds seem to want nothing more than to spill their contents on the thirsting earth, but they hold off. Instead they close the city in with a shadow that spills over, the day feeling immediately gloomy. Eliza holds her nerves in the lump of her throat as she waits to enter the small café James had chosen for lunch. John had gone in half an hour earlier under the premise of waiting for a date that will never show up, an excuse to keep the center table long enough to be witness to their meeting.

               She stumbles in as soon as the clock on her phone shifts to noon, legs carrying her quicker than she wishes to the table he’d saved. She passes John, bowler hat and all, on the way. He nods. She’s nearly choking on the thrumming of her heartbeat in her chest.

               He’s wearing her favorite of his shirts; a soft blue, collared cotton he dresses underneath a navy cardigan. It turns his eyes brighter, the green of the sea on an overcast day like today. James stands to greet her, holding her hand and nodding and waiting for her to sit across from him before he joins her. She sips the water already at the table and he chats as if they’re back to the beginning. It feels like the beginning. The tapping of Eliza’s heart against her chest slows into a steady hum. She leans back against her chair. She laughs.

               The conversation turns quite slowly to the topic of his counseling; he hadn’t mentioned it yet, and it had felt wonderful to just catch up with him. But glancing up Eliza notices John in a booth near them, watching over a menu. He sits on the edge of his chair. Eliza recoils at the glaring memory that comes flying back then, back to her mission and the reason she nearly hadn’t joined him in the first place.

               “So, this is for…for your therapy?”

               “We’re working on getting back the things we lost-making peace with the past. It’s a…it’s a very intensive program, but I think it’s going well.” A pause, and then, “I miss you, Elizabeth.”

               The sound of her name from his lips, the way he’d crafted it so neatly with perfectionistic diction and a near purring of syllables, stirs something within her. It is not love, not in the way she had felt so long ago although she doubts it will ever go away. Her heart, once thrumming wildly with the potential of possibility and boundless optimism, sinks and settles at the bottom of her stomach as a sea stone set cold with a fear of the rolling tide. Her full name, once beautiful and bright, is beautifully masked venom from a snake’s scheming tongue. Eliza freezes in her seat. Like any of her actions back in the cold of their fall-winter-spring together, it does not go unnoticed.

               “What?” James inches forward in his chair, a hand on the table between them. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

               “Where does your group meet?”

               “Uptown.”

               “How’d you find them?”

               “Online.”

               “Why did you really want me here?” It takes an impulse and a shot of courage to send the words across the table, and once she does Eliza immediately regrets them. James’s lips turn, just a hint of a degree, but enough to hint at the first signs of his anger. She backs further away, feet planted sideways on the floor; a getaway. She’d gotten good at escape plans in the months with-and now without him.

               “Are you even in therapy?”

               He does not want to answer her question; the Cheshire grin he has grown fill between the lines of their conversation sufficiently enough for Eliza to feel a shockwave-sparks that light within her body as warning flares. Her chair scuffs the floor as she propels it out from under her, gathering her bag. His hand is on hers before she can move away.

               “I knew you’d come running the second I called. That’s how it works, isn’t it? Sweet Eliza. Sweet, naive Elizabeth. You need me, you know. Who else is going to keep you safe?”

               His hand is all the way up her arm now, running itself up and down in a trail that leaves icy pin-pricks in its wake. She wants to recoil-she wills her muscles to punch, or tense…anything to fight back. Instead, she stays rooted-frozen. His touch transports her to a time where she could no longer move-to fall-winter-spring, where she’d been motionless under his spell of charm and wit and poise he’d saved only for the public image.

               It feels as though time has suspended itself in mid-air as both of his hands find their way to her hips. In reality, it is only a matter of seconds before John has pulled her away, throwing filthy, daggered curse words his way as he wraps Eliza in his own arms, turning so her body is sheltered from him. He bellows in a voice she’s never heard from his reserved manner, with threats to harm she’d never intended. She’d never wanted any of this to happen. She’d never thought she’d have to be saved.

               Naive; she’d trusted James. Her heart had fluttered at its reintroduction to his eyes. Her heart had been so full of hope, of stories she’d tell Angelica of his progress and his light.

He’d come to hurt her. She’d been naïve.

John does not speak to her on their way back to the apartment. Angelica does not say ‘I told you so.’ Instead, she whispers words of her middle sister’s boundless kindness as they lay nose to nose in bed that night. Eliza pretends to sleep. She is not sure whether reality or her dreams will haunt her more, and she is not willing to gamble. One word whispers her to a lurid, sweat-laden nightmare.

Sweet Eliza; forgiving. Kind. Sweet Elizabeth, always sweet.

…

               “I think we need to live apart for a while.” She holds her breath then, the words tumbling out faster than she’d expected them to. It’s easier to speak to Alexander, simpler; even when she hadn’t wanted to have this conversation at all.

               The air is stagnant and stale and Alex fights to keep his head above it all. Eliza’s suggestion-request, really-burrows deep into his mind. With it come one thousand accusations, thoughts and shouting and terse words all aimed from his mind to his heart. Although he seeks answers and the ability to understand he is suddenly buried under the premise of what she is saying, what the suggestion might mean for them. He hadn’t envisioned a life without her in a long time. The temporary piece of their living situation had gone away long ago-or so he’d thought. It’s only been a little over a month since he’d moved in-what could have gone wrong in such a short amount of time? Is she having second thoughts about him?

               Two long, agonizing minutes and Alex still has not said anything. Eliza watches the physical manifestation of his thought process in his wandering eyes and hand that rubs the back of his neck. He nods, accepting, but his mouth hinges and unhinges in the beginnings of questions that will not form. He’s not sure whether the lump in his throat is from the now arid air or the beginnings of raw emotion that have welled up in his throat. Either way, he rests his hand on her thigh.

               “…okay. Okay. I’m not going to argue with you-this is your apartment, that would be stupid. But can I just…can I ask why?”

               “Because I’ve been going through a lot of memories…this giant, holed-up mess of things I never even knew happened to me. I’ve been so busy with you that I’ve forgotten myself again.” He looks away then, poorly-hidden guilt shrouding his sinking figure and seeping into her skin. “It’s not your fault-god no, it’s really not. It’s just this fun thing I do where I attach myself to people too heavily. Right now, I really can’t afford that.”

               “Are we still together?” His tone of voice lingers somewhere between hopeful and subconsciously chilled. Alex is not angry; he could not find it in his heart to be cold to her about something like this. Disappointment sinks into his joints, his heart. The room changes almost immediately before his eyes, as if her words could erase the painting of domesticity they’d created in just a second. His mug is an intrusion in their pile of dishes, his blanket a left-behind. He pulls it from the back of the couch, cradling it in his hands before moving to their-her-bedroom.

               “Or course we are-Alex, are you angry with me?”

               “I just need a minute!” He pulls his bags from the closet, emptying drawers and cabinets and casting them by the door in a haphazard fashion. She stands in the hallway, watching his flurried actions with tear-blurred vision. The more he packs, the less control she has over herself. Eliza lingers in a limbo between being unable to see or hear anything that’s going on and taking it all in much too fast. There is no in-between. When Alex flies by her again she stops him, a hand on his, breathing his name through quivering lips.

               “I’m not angry, Eliza. I just,” He flings the last bag by the door, holding her shoulders in his hands before wiping the warm, salted tracks of tears from her reddened cheeks. She shakes in his hold, her uncertain frown a permanent fixture. “If we need to live apart, we need to live apart. I’ll call the guys and we’ll figure it out.”

               There is something more that lingers on the edge of his sentence, tucked back away before it spills over the edge. A coating of thickness creeps in and fills the air around them, turning Eliza’s breath heavy and laborious. This is important. This is for you. You’ll be alright.

               As if to pacify the thoughts she does not speak aloud, Alex shifts over to wrap her in his arms. He feels different, radiating love but lingering with a hint of the disappointment she had seen earlier. She does not like it. She can’t blame him.

               There is a bitter taste on his tongue, one he hopes will not translate as he kisses her goodbye later that night. There is no more room for words-he has lost them all in the fight to keep himself sane-to understand her request and accept it as dutifully as he should. When she shuts the door behind him, the slow, hesitant click is one last shock to his heart. Eliza watches out the peephole as he goes, bags slung over his shoulders, with a heavy heart.

               She wants nothing more than to run after him; to invite him back inside their home. She’s already mourning his place in bed beside her, which no doubt has already run cold. The chill in the air comes from a lack of his presence, not the usual air of bitter, unforgiving January. The apartment is empty. Without his furnishings; his little souvenirs on the shelf, opened and pen-marked books on every flat surface….this is not home. But the immediate hole in her heart also speaks in volumes to her mind, which is racing with the implications of what she has just done. She’s hurt him. She’s heartbroken. In that same frame of mind, there is a light. It is small, but she figures it might just be what she needs to get by. Racing to the office, she pulls out an unopened sketch book and a tin of charcoals.

               Next Wednesday, Eliza pulls the book from her bag and opens it, wordless, and watches as Lisa nods at her work. Most of the thick paper is filled with dark blues, accented only with blacks and the occasional mint in a swirling of colors resembling a thick and tumultuous sea. A red line crosses the page from one end to the other, from the darkness to a completely different masterpiece. There, at the top, is the centerpiece of it all. A quarter-sized cocktail of yellows and whites and orange stands out among the dark, coasting above the sea as a beacon. Hope. It’s the first time she’s pulled out her sketchbook since that summer-winter-spring, since it had been filled only with the mimicking of the purples and blues that were a constant ornament to her skin. This feels different, right. And although that wire, that red tether still binds her to Alexander, it is through the light and the hope. He’s connecting her from each opposite end of the art piece. He’s there.

               The apartment is empty without him. There is a lack of light, of warmth and laughter he had once radiated brilliantly. Eliza knows that this is for the best; for healing, for finding the light…for her. Her heart and her mind and her body pull toward him. The apartment is frightening without him. Living alone is a quiet she hadn’t wanted to feel. But her goal remains the same, through Alexander’s crestfallen eyes and her own tearing heart. This isn’t temporary. This isn’t over. This is a step in the right direction.

               And maybe, if she tells herself that enough, that little yellow light will cover her thick paper one day.

[humorepoch9-blog]

Tips from students to help improve your teaching (opinion)

The first recommendation of the American Academy’s recent report "The Future of Undergraduate Education" is simple: we should work to improve undergraduate instruction.

But how? In many disciplines, we don’t have rigorous measures of learning, so we cannot easily identify the best practitioners and simply copy what they do. Undergraduate students, however, experience numerous teachers and a lot of instruction, some good and some bad. They are a source of valuable information about what constitutes good practice.

So, at a recent event co-sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Education, the University of Wisconsin at Madison College of Letters and Science, and the American Academy, we asked five undergraduate students at the university to describe instructional practices that they’ve encountered rarely but were especially effective -- and that they think should be more widely shared. Of course, some strategies work in some disciplines better than others, in some kinds of classes better than others and for some instructors better than others. Here’s what the students at the event told us.

Christian Cuevas, a senior majoring in computer science: One strategy that more professors should use, especially in STEM classes but also anytime a complex solution or process needs to be explained, is to explain all the details. While that can result in professors covering information that may seem painfully obvious to them, it saves students confusion. When professors skip over steps of a problem and only focus on those they feel are the most crucial or important, it puts the burden on students to connect the dots in their heads, while still trying to pay attention to the stream of information in the lecture.

Few steps in a solution are obvious to students who have never encountered a similar problem before. Even if some steps are easy to figure out upon reflection, students lack the bandwidth to reflect while also taking notes and ingesting the lecture. Skipping steps risks students leaving the classroom with little understanding and having to put the scattered pieces together on their own.

By covering solutions in their entirety, professors allow their students to focus on absorbing the complex new information in front of them. That frees students to ask questions and leaves them with complete examples in their notes, which can be crucial when they are trying to solve similar problems in their homework or when studying for exams.

Imagine you were trying to bake a cake and you had never done it before. Suppose that the recipe skipped directly from beating the eggs to putting the finished batter in the oven, ignoring all the steps in between. You would fail! The missing steps might be intellectually uninteresting to the master baker, but the novice baker has to learn them. Just as we need to be guided through every detail when baking a cake for the first time, we also need thorough guidance when approaching a difficult calculus or physics problem for the first time.

Alexis Argall (B.A. 2018), a political science and communication and life sciences major: At a large research institution like UW Madison, it is easy to feel like “just another number.” Many professors would like to know their students personally but don’t know how to do it; others seem to share information with students and then forget about them until next class period. Yet a professor in one of my classes used a strategy that others should try.

Participation was worth 30 percent of our grade, and it included a requirement to email the professor weekly with a connection that we had made between something that we’d discussed in class and something outside of it. That connection could come from another course or from our personal lives -- anything that made us stop and remember what we had learned that week. It forced me to think about the material outside of class and helped me find practical applications for what I was learning.

We were not graded rigidly on the content of our emails but rather just that we had made some sort of meaningful connection. Grading them on a submission basis rather than a content basis saved a lot of time for my professor, while still pressing us to process the information.

For my professor, the benefit was learning more about us as “whole people” rather than just students in her class. It gave her a more holistic view of us students, as well as forced us to actively process what we were learning. The requirement made us learn more, and the sense that the professor knew who we were made us want to learn more.

Joe Venuta (B.A. 2018), a philosophy major: One valuable lesson I’ve learned has been how to approach negative feedback. Specifically, I have come to realize the value in engaging with criticism and improving the work on which it is given. And I would not have discovered this without professors whose classes required me to do so.

In many classes, faculty members give comments on assignments in writing along with the final grade. While that kind of feedback can be a tool for improvement, it is too easy for students to brush comments off and simply keep those things in mind for next time rather than consider how they might be addressed. Furthermore, students often see such comments as the instructor’s justification for giving a less than perfect score rather than what it really is: an opportunity to improve that particular assignment.

My professors have used two main strategies for inducing students to process negative feedback. One was to require the submission of a draft in advance. While successful students often work through multiple drafts anyway, submitting a draft for review forces them to consider major weaknesses in their assignment that they may otherwise overlook. In addition, submitting an improved final draft after responding to any criticism can help show students the value and achievability of addressing shortcomings.

Another strategy is through in-person conferences. A back-and-forth discussion requires students to face specific criticisms head-on. It also allows them to become more comfortable with defending their work while staying composed -- a valuable skill in any field. While in-person conferences do require more time from both the student and professor, a conversation lasting even 15 minutes can help.

Personalized criticism from professors is a valuable resource, one that is too rarely used. Whether through multiple drafts or in-person discussions, engaging with negative feedback can benefit students in any area of study.

Kailey Mullane, a sophomore majoring in communication arts and economics: My first thought when I was invited to speak was, “I am not qualified to be giving world-renowned professors technical teaching strategies that will solve all their classroom problems.” But then I thought about what makes classes valuable to me. Numerous factors come into play: material, class size, other students and so on. However, I realized that one simple thing consistently makes classes better: when teachers make the students introduce themselves at the start of each class period in the first few weeks.

Students introducing and saying a little bit about themselves (like majors and hometowns) really changes the dynamic. Knowing a classmate’s name instantly creates a more inviting environment and is the first step in developing a relationship. In those classes, I notice that instead of sitting silently staring at screens, students actually talk to one another before class starts. They talk during class: students are more willing to offer comments, ask questions and disagree with one another. And they talk to each other outside of class, often about the material -- which means there is more outside learning.

Time is precious. But in small classes, introductions take just three to five minutes. Large lectures are more difficult, but TAs can effectively administer that process in discussion sections. Just taking time at the start of each class to have students introduce themselves can have invaluable effects in and beyond the classroom.

Chlodagh Walsh, (B.B.A. 2018), a finance, investment and banking major: My first semesters of college were filled with mostly large lecture classes, the "weed out" type that could ruin your GPA or force you to change your major. On the first day of class, professors would outline the predetermined curves and tell us exactly how many students would receive A's, regardless how much we learned. One professor told us that, while we should be able to complete 80 percent of the exams using his lectures, we could not prepare for the more nuanced application of the material that constituted the remaining 20 percent.

The first class in my major was accompanied by a 19-page syllabus that we were tested on. The professor graded us based on our class rank; if you did better than half of the 300-person class, you received a grade of 50 percent. He set the grading practices to mimic the business world that we were set to enter: cutthroat and ultracompetitive. The syllabus stated that if you aced an exam, the professor would take you out to dinner -- as far as I know, he has never had to follow through. Most class participation was involuntary; the professor cold-called students unsystematically, so we shied away from wearing clothing that might draw his attention. I found a good hiding place, just outside his usual line of sight.

I had a different class in the same room a year later. It was another large, entry-level class that was subject to the GPA restrictions of the business school, which sets a maximum average class GPA of 3.0. So I was pretty surprised when the professor said she had hoped to see high test averages. She explained that our test scores were an indication of her teaching; if she were doing her job right, we should score well.

She made me view my GPA as a reflection of not only my effort but also the quality of the instruction I was receiving. The way she framed the class from the beginning emphasized our learning ahead of grades, which I came to understand are not synonymous.

Since many people performed well, the letter grade differentials at the high end reflected the GPA regulations more than student competencies. I can understand the business school may have reasons to regulate govern grading, so I was not frustrated by that. Instead, with the help of the professor, I learned to value the knowledge and skills -- the learning -- that I gained more than whatever direction my GPA moved after finals.

Students admired this professor and volunteered topics to discuss at the onset of each class. She invited us to her office hours and made us welcome when we came. The TAs spoke highly of her in discussion sections. The atmosphere was remarkably different than the lecture style I was used to and reduced the interstudent competition that other large classes encouraged. I wasn’t afraid of being caught off guard and embarrassed by answering a question wrong, so I didn’t need to hide in class or avoid eye contact. The environment made us less afraid of failing and more intellectually ambitious.

I applied this perspective to other classes, regardless of each professor's structure. I was less stressed about exam scores and more concerned about my actual understanding. As a self-identified really good crammer, I had perfected scoring high and learning little for years, but that seemed less attractive now.

Knowing my class standing was less interesting, too: my own learning was what mattered. I have found most students succeed when professors don’t intend to intimidate, reduce the reliance on grades as a measure of success, and identify student learning as the measure of their own success.

*******

One point of publicizing these students’ comments is just to provide good additions to the instructors’ toolbox. Of course, for any suggestion, the instructor has to reflect on whether it will work for them, in their discipline and in their situation. The second point is to encourage administrators and instructors to seek out and disseminate considered student suggestions. Thoughtful students are invaluable resources when we are looking to improve, and their insights are solicited too rarely.

Source: https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2018/09/04/tips-students-help-improve-your-teaching-opinion