Sticky Teeth

[gin_and_satori]

I really hate e-mailing professors and asking for things, even little things like a few moments of their time. It takes me forever. I get up and pace the room for no reason at all. My hands sweat. When I'm done, I tend to sigh really loud like someone opening a soda can. It makes me nervous as hell. Trying to talk intelligently about academics with

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Sticky Teeth

[anonymous]

What will happen? You will start out in academia a nervous young man, angry that you are frequently mistaken for a student. You will feel mild unease that some of your students are in fact older than you. At faculty parties, you will occasionally laugh at jokes you do not find funny just for something to do.

The years will go by faster and faster until you are almost dizzy from the speed of it. Despite advances in technology, you will find yourself in an office with a swivel chair and a wooden desk. (Technology decrees, however that your windows be hermetically sealed, so that sounds of campus chatter and laughter come to you at an eerie remove.) You will have tired of contact lenses, scorned lasik and now wear glasses that can best be described as spectacles. You will peer over the spectacles at a nervous young man who aspires to be your graduate assistant. You will see in him your younger self and smile. He will wonder anxiously if he has been, unintentionally, amusing. You will ask yourself, if you could go back in time, would you?