The Nix(65)
Her phone dinged. Jason again.
Ur at home?
Yep all alone feeb’s at the gym :-)
Only now there was this dumb English professor who seemed set on not giving her what she wanted. Who actually seemed intent on failing her. Not even her learning disability had persuaded him, to her dismay. The paperwork for this disability was on file at the Office of Adaptive Services. It was official, this learning disability, because of a particularly brilliant plan that was hatched at the beginning of the year, when her new plump roommate, who was on several medications for her truly severe ADHD problems, let slip how many legally mandated accommodations she was entitled to, including someone to take notes for her, extra time for quizzes and tests, extended deadlines, excused absences, and so on. In other words, complete freedom from the scrutiny of her professors that—even better!—was legally binding under the Americans with Disabilities Act. All Laura needed to do was answer a questionnaire in such a way as to trigger a certain diagnosis. Simple. She went down to the Office of Adaptive Services. The questionnaire was composed of twenty-five statements she had to either agree or disagree with. She figured it would be pretty obvious what she needed to lie about, but once she started the questionnaire she was troubled by how true some of the statements were, such as: I have trouble remembering things I just read. Yes, she did! That was true almost every time she was asked to read an actual printed book. Or: I find myself daydreaming when I’m supposed to be paying attention. Which was something that happened to her literally dozens of times per class. She started feeling queasy that there might be something actually wrong with her until she got deeper into the questionnaire:
The thought of homework makes me feel panicked and stressed.
I have trouble making friends.
The stress of school sometimes gives me unbearable headaches and/or indigestion.
None of these things were a hundred percent true, and this made her feel more or less normal again, such that when she was diagnosed with severe learning disabilities she felt really good about herself, like when she interviewed for that movie theater job and got it immediately, that same sense of accomplishment. She did not feel guilty about playing the learning disability card, since she had answered several of the statements on the questionnaire honestly, making her roughly ten percent learning disabled, plus her classes were so boring and stupid and impossible to pay attention to that she added another forty-five percent to that as a kind of de facto environmental learning block, making her fifty-five percent learning disabled, which she then rounded up.
She tossed a handful of paper clips approximately three feet into the air and watched as they began spiraling away from each other as they flew. She thought if she could practice this enough she could achieve perfect paper-clip symmetry. She could toss them in such a way that they’d go up and down as a single aggregate lump.
The paper clips sprinkled themselves across the floor. Hamlet said,
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
This was such a waste of time.
She had one move left, one more bullet in the chamber. She dialed the dean’s number.
“Professor Anderson is not creating ideal conditions for my education,” she said once she had the dean on the line. “I don’t feel like his classroom is a good place to learn.”
“I see,” the dean said. “I see. Could you explain why?”
“I do not feel I can express my individual viewpoint.”
“And why is that, specifically?”
“I feel like Professor Anderson does not value my unique perspective.”
“Well, maybe we should have a meeting with him then.”
“It is not a safe space.”
“I’m sorry, what?” the dean said. Laura could almost hear the woman sitting up straighter in her chair.
Safe space. It was the current buzzword on campus. She wasn’t even entirely sure what it meant, but she knew it tended to tweak the ears of university administrators.
“His classroom does not feel safe,” Laura said. “It is not a safe space.”
“Oh my.”
“Feels abusive, actually.”
“Oh my.”
“I’m not saying he is abusive or has quote-unquote abused me,” Laura said. “I’m saying it is my perception that in his classroom I am fearful of encountering abuse.”
“I see. I see.”
“I cannot emotionally deal with writing my Hamlet paper, and the reason is because he has not created a safe space in which I feel okay expressing my actual true self to him.”
“Oh, of course.”
“Writing a paper for Professor Anderson triggers negative feelings of stress and vulnerability. It feels oppressive. If I write a paper using my own words he’ll give me a bad grade and I’ll feel bad about myself. Do you think I should have to feel bad about myself in order to get a degree?”
“No, not necessarily,” the dean said.
“Me neither. I would hate to have to reveal this situation to the student newspaper,” Laura said. “Or post about it on my blog. Or to my thousand friends on iFeel.”
Which was pretty much checkmate for this particular conversation. The dean said she would be looking into the matter, and in the meantime why didn’t Laura forget about the essay for now and keep quiet until they could all come to a nice resolution.