"Office Hours" by Erica W. Weems
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
Aurelia was explaining problem sets to three undergraduates who sat in the Teaching Assistants’ office. It was the same three who’d come before the last quiz. Their scores had improved by an average of five points each, and they had returned, hoping to continue the trend.
“So in a Boolean model, this would be ...” Aurelia began.
“True!” they cried.
“Yes!” Aurelia was energized by their responsiveness. Not only were they listening to her, but they were processing what she said.
“And in this instance – ” Aurelia continued, but the rest of her words were engulfed by a crash as the half-open door swung into the beige corridor, and one of her twelve office mates, whom she had dubbed Angry Pit Bull, barged in.
The students’ heads swivelled toward her, taking in the bulky sweater and book bag, along with the glare over square glasses with dark rims.
Aurelia cleared her throat, “In this instance ...” she paused.
The three students turned toward her.
“Which instance?” asked one, lost.
Aurelia felt so heated that she was sure steam poured out of her ears.
“Why are you here?” demanded Angry Pit Bull.
“These are my office hours.” Aurelia steadied her voice as much as possible.
“No, they’re mine!” Angry Pit Bull slammed a cup of water she had been drinking on the table near the door. Water sloshed onto the undergraduates’ bags piled near the table’s legs.
One student jumped up out of concern for his papers, which were peeping out from his satchel, and he found in dismay that droplets had fallen on them.
“Oh – oh!” He wailed. Holding them up. “I need to dry these,” he said, looking lamely at Aurelia.
Angry Pit Bull stood by, unmoved.
“There’s a washroom down the corridor,” said another student, and they turned toward the door.
Angry Pit Bull said nothing. No apology. No acknowledgement.
Crushed, Aurelia watched as her students struggled with their wet items.
“Here, let me – ” she picked up a wet computer tablet, attempting to dry it with a single tissue. It dissolved in the rivulets of water coursing over it. She hurried down the corridor to find paper towels in the washroom.
When she returned to the office, Angry Pit Bull had moved Aurelia’s belongings to a side table near the door.
“What are you doing? Don’t touch my things!” Aurelia was incensed. Other than her student’s wet computer tablet, she had never handled anyone else’s belongings in the office. Besides, her bag contained vials of an extremely acidic substance from the lab where she worked that could result in acute illness or even –
“I need to be here for my office hours.”
“There are three desks in this room. And you interrupted me, my students, and my office hours!”
“These are my office hours!”
They eyed each other like boxers in a ring.
“No one is here to see you,” Aurelia flung at her.
Angry Pit Bull seethed at this jab against her popularity.
“My office hours begin at 1 p.m. and end at 2 p.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays. I signed up on the front door!” Aurelia distinctly remembered signing up for those hours to make room for her lab work, which was part of her natural science degree. As a double-major, she needed to juggle her schedule like a unicyclist on a tightrope.
“My office hours begin at 1:30 p.m. on Thursdays,” growled Angry Pit Bull, “to accommodate my weekly lecture.”
“What lecture?” Aurelia challenged.
“A lecture on the significance of sandals during the Later Roman Empire!”
Sandals, indeed. Aurelia marched to the outside of the front door, which had a piece of paper tacked onto it. The paper had columns labelled Monday through Friday, with horizontal lines underneath them, demarcating half-hour increments of the day. She had written her name underneath the 1 p.m. line of the Tuesday and Thursday columns, and had drawn an arrow extending from the 1 to 2 p.m. line, using a pen that swung from the door. It had no cap, and its ink was drying out. Aurelia remembered pressing it into the paper, and there was even a nick on the Thursday column, toward the end of the hour, where she’d eked out a faint arrow head. She looked in horror at a line pencilled over half of her Thursday slot, beginning at 1:30 p.m..
“You drew over my slot!” Aurelia cried.
Angry Pit Bull thudded over.
“There’s no pen mark there. Mine’s in pencil,” she said, taking a pencil out of her sweater pocket, and darkening the line she had drawn.
Furious, Aurelia went back into the office to wait for more students during office hours that were surely hers. As she made her way to her seat, she saw the paper cup of water left there by Angry Pit Bull. Her eyes travelled to her bag, stuffed with the books and papers necessary for her long day. Some lab equipment bulged under its zippered top, stretching the seam. Seized with an idea, she unzipped her bag, a vial almost tumbling out. She snatched it up, opened its lid, and tapped its contents into Angry Pit Bull’s water. There was a slight fizz from the acidic substance.
The door to the office swung wider, and Aurelia froze. What would happen now that she’d been caught?
She braced herself for Angry Pit Bull’s rage, but only saw the wall on the other side of the corridor. Stubby fingers appeared around the side of the door, becoming paler as they braced it against something – apparently the pencil that was in Angry Pit Bull’s other hand, crushing its lead into the timetable on the door while thickening the line she had drawn.
Angry Pit Bull then appeared in the doorway, her face resolved into smugness that enraged Aurelia to her core. “It’s my turn now.”
Aurelia’s eyes went to the clock on the wall, then drifted to the water on the table, which had settled into its clear, insipid state.
“That’s mine,” said Angry Pit Bull, picking up the cup, taking a couple of gulps, and grimacing as its contents coursed down her throat.
Aurelia stared. “Ok.” She picked up her bags and hastily departed.