Page 65 of Collin: Episodes 1-3
“Certainly. And if one of us declines to share, don’t take that as a sign that you shouldn’t ask. We may have an NDA of our own or are simply not ready to discuss something.”
“Yes, sir.”
They lingered in quiet for a while, but Mr. Reevesworth did not reopen his book. His fingers kept working on Collin’s scalp. Even with the fading bruising, it still felt like a taste of ambrosia to Collin’s nerves.
“We should discuss next week.” Mr. Reevesworth’s fingers stilled, but his hand still rested on Collin’s head. “Today is Friday. Your first class is scheduled for Monday morning.”
“Geology.” Collin sighed. “I’m probably failing, but if I drop it now, it still counts as a failing grade for the semester.”
“I would have thought you would be interested in geology. It has uses for your other interests.”
“And I’ve studied those applications on my own. It’s pretty easy to look stuff up, and my research profs have been awesome, mostly. It’s just this class.”
“Explain.”
Collin pushed himself up on the couch, still kneeling between Mr. Reevesworth’s legs. He slid his hands between his thighs and fixed his eyes somewhere near Mr. Reevesworth’s waistband. “It’s the professor, Dr. Kean. He’s about eight-six years old, he’s had a stroke, and I can’t understand half of what he says. It doesn’t feel relevant, and literally anything in the book could be on the test. You would think after teaching the class this long he’d have a set syllabus, and the students who took it last year said it was bad, but as long as you read the write-ups, then everything was doable. So, I thought I could show up and just read the material in class while he monologued and probably get a B. But Dr. Kean got some sort of idea about AI and cheating and rewrote all the tests, assigned a physical book, and took down the write-ups of his lecture notes. We’re lost. All of us. But he’s tenured and won’t retire.”
Collin dared a glance up.
Mr. Reevesworth was raising an eyebrow. “Well. There’s contributing to the future, and there’s not knowing when to make room for the half a dozen geologists with PhDs I personally know who are looking for a professorship.”
Collin cracked a broken laugh. “I know at least one myself.”
Mr. Reevesworth reached out and pushed the hair back from Collin’s face. “There’s two choices we can make here. One, we can fight the system and get the class disqualified or the instructor replaced.”
“We can do that?”
“There are ways, yes. Or two, you can quit the class, take the zero, and move on, fulfill the requirements in some other fashion down the line.”
“I really need to graduate within the year. If I quit the class, I won’t qualify for graduation next semester without overloading, which means more tuition and less time to work for you, sir.”
Mr. Reevesworth tapped his fingers together, looking away, obviously in thought. “Firstly, Collin, I’m not concerned about your tuition, and neither should you be either. If we need to pay for an additional semester, I can cover that. I would rather have you healthy, and this falls under that from my vantage point. Secondly, I want you to think about this situation and what you want to walk away from it knowing about yourself and where you are now.”
“Honestly, sir, I just wanted to survive it, get the paper with my degree, and pray I have a job. My mom is adamant that both Alice and I graduate. Anything less is a failure.”
“Do you care about what you’re studying?”
Collin’s shoulders slumped. “I did. When you saw me doing that research, I felt so alive. I loved it. And it showed. But some of these general requirements and the rest.” He shrugged. “I just haven’t had the passion this past year. It’s just been about finishing.”
“Burnout.”
“I know. I’ve been trying to work past it, sir.”
“You don’t work past burnout. You crash or you make a change.”
“I think I still care when I think about it. But I just can’t…care when I’m trying to pass.”
“You know that in centuries previous universities were not separated by four-year institutions and graduation was by oral examination. Four years for all subjects for a bachelor degree is something that only came much, much later. As did standardization, much like what came to the world as a whole with industrialization.”
“I’ve heard something about that, but, I mean, never really thought about it, sir.”
“When you truly consider it though, it tells one little about mastery and much more about one’s ability to adapt, survive, and move through a system.” Mr. Reevesworth tapped his fingers together again, eyes pondering something in the distance. “Take for example a student seeking to master economic theory and a student seeking to have a working knowledge of say…the Middle East. Should we assume that both areas of study take the same length of time to reach journeyman status, let alone mastery?”
Collin frowned. “Are you saying that you don’t believe in the higher education system?”
Mr. Reevesworth smiled, almost bitterly. “Our education system should be understood for what it is, a mass system laden with debt and answering to many masters. As a society, we cannot even agree on who plays what role. For example, is it a business? Are students clients to be served? If so, why are students so often cast in the supplicant role? Who is responsible for success? What even is a success? A balanced informed citizen, or an employable workforce? The upstart and entitled student is so often the brunt of jokes and much malingering by professors and others, but many of these students are signing loans and paying in various ways as much they would spend to buy a decent condo outright over four years or an estate over the course of sequential advanced degrees. Were I buying something for one hundred to four hundred thousand dollars, I would expect service, excellent service, and a guaranteed and serviceable outcome.”
Collin laughed. “I mean, some students have amazing experiences. My research professor is awesome, in the research, I mean. He gives terrible lectures, but at least his grading is fair.”
