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After a while of running around hoping I would stumble on something familiar, I flagged down somebody who looked like another professor and asked for directions. He gave me the kind of withering look I'd been catching from students and staff all morning, but at least managed to muster up the decency to stop and point me in the right direction.
"And you said you're a professor here?" he asked. "You should probably know your way around."
He walked away before I could answer. All I could do was send a glare in the direction of his back and rush to the building where I was supposed to be. I was a few minutes late when I got into the classroom, and I noticed a couple of students were already packing up to leave. They rolled their eyes and sighed when I arrived, dropping back into their seats like they were inconvenienced by class.
Several seats in the room were empty, and when I commented on it, a student quickly and sharply told me those students had already left because I wasn't there when they got there. I pointed out that policy of the university dictated students remain in class for fifteen minutes before leaving if a teacher was late, but that was met with nothing but a scoff.
"Our time is important. We're not going to waste it waiting for someone. The professors here know that. They put the work up online and people who missed can turn it in there," a girl said from the front row. "Some of us like a classic college experience, but with technology, it's not really necessary."
"Classic college experience?" I asked.
A couple of them snickered.
"Sitting in a classroom," the girl explained. "Attending in-person lectures and doing tests and things like this. Others don't want to take the time to do it and just handle their stuff online."
"What are they doing that is so important they can't come to class?" I asked. "Working?"
"We're in college," she said as if I didn't understand the concept. "We don't have jobs. We have to focus on our studies. A few of them are influencers, though, so they are technically working."
I stared at the students in front of me blankly, not believing what I was hearing.
"You don't have jobs, but your time is so important?" I asked. "You do understand that my time is just as important than yours, if not more so."
"I find that deeply offensive," a guy at the back of the room stated. "You're being ageist and assuming value and hierarchy not established by discussion and mutual understanding. We are paying to take courses at this university, so, technically, you work for us."
I was so baffled by the stream of nonsense and contradiction that came out of his mouth, I could barely put together a response. The attitude and entitlement of these clearly wealthy, indulged, and heavily privileged students grated on me, and I was having difficulty imagining this being my future.
"You place more value on the consumer than on the professional providing what is being consumed?" I asked. "It is more important to have money and spend it on things than it is to have skill that demands that money being spent?"
A few looked confused, others looked like they were ready to start an argument with me, and I knew I wasn't in the right place. I took the opportunity to rein in control of the conversation again and direct it to business ethics, but with very few exceptions, it didn't look like the students engaged.
And so went my first day of my new opportunity.
As I walked back to my house that evening, I couldn't get my mind off Camden. Before I got home, I took out my phone and called him.
"I was late to my first day," I said when he answered.
He laughed, and the sound took some of the tension out of my shoulders. But at the same time, just hearing his voice was making the hurt inside me worse. I missed him so much, even more than when I first left. It wasn't getting any better. But this was what I'd chosen. I needed to make the most of it.
That lasted for two weeks before I found myself sitting in the office of the coordinator who had hired me, explaining what I was feeling about the school and most of the students. Some had warmed up, and I was seeing more to them than I had originally, but others were just a consistent reminder of why this position wasn't the right fit for me.
That didn't mean I wanted to abandon it completely. I'd gotten an idea and I wanted to talk to her about it. It struck me as a bit ironic that the seed of the idea came from that girl on the first day of class. If it worked, though, it could make all the difference.
13
CAMDEN
“Ah, this sucks,” I said as I pulled into the parking lot of the school for the first time since Kristen had left.
The whole drive had been like that, really. Every landmark, every street I turned down, every mile marker that I otherwise wouldn’t normally see for any reason other than going to Slater for school, and thus seeing Kristen, was another turn of the knife. Even the little coffee shop that I had stopped in on my own several times was still tied to the memory of Kristen tripping over herself coming out of their weird door that doesn’t open all the way and spilling her mocha latte on me. She had apologized over and over while she laughed so hard tears were streaming down her face and she patted me down with napkins.
I missed everything about her, but in that moment specifically, I missed her laugh.
Focus, I needed focus. I needed to aim my thoughts and energy at the task at hand. School.
The guys had been very supportive when I told them how I still wanted to finish my studies and get my degree, even going as far as offering to tutor me if I needed help. Victor had taken all these classes before himself in business school and was all about me picking his brain if needed. I appreciated my friends so much for their offers and insistence on helping me out, but the fact of the matter was it all paled in comparison to Kristen being there.
I had to keep reminding myself that what she was doing was right for her. She deserved to be off at the big university with all their funding and opportunities, and the bigger paycheck she got was something she had earned too. Plus, they had put her up in a place that was bigger than her last, and she was living there rent-free while she taught. Who could argue with that?
