MARSTON ━︎━︎ PROFESSOR MARSTON

chapter five - ❝the letters of abelard & héloïse.❞

SYNOPSIS / Before the Christmas holidays, a student confesses their feelings to Andrew in their recent assignment.

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A N D R E W

ABOUT ten to thirteen students dropped the class. I would for sure see about a quarter of the next semester because it's a must-take course for the program in order to get a credit. But if they had a change of mind, I would not be seeing them almost ever again.

It's unfortunate to see them go, and I would love to live in a world where literature was everyone's passion, but to each their own. Fewer assignments to mark, perhaps?

Speaking of, I sit alone in the lecture hall on Fridays, grading essay after essay. I'm one of those professors that don't leave for home until around eight o'clock on Fridays, some days I leave a little earlier. My goal is to grade a quarter of the essays by 5:00 PM. By then, I'll drive home and enjoy my free time. Then, I would be grading at least three before bedtime. 

Sighing in defeat and disappointment, I wrote 58% at the bottom of the last page, written by yet another one of my students. The class average ranges in 80%, though there are floaters of students on the brink of failing, and this student is about to become one of them with another assignment to lower their grade even more. It's understandable that there are, and why there are, many reasons why students struggle in their classes, but that's what makes it concerning.

My watch read 4:34 PM, the pile of graded essays was just a compilation of seven assignments, which to me, has got to be some kind of record - or miracle. 

I call it a day. I began gathering stationery and placing them in my bag. I tossed my third coffee in the bin and then made my way to the essays. 

Then I don't. If I sat down and squeezed in another good twenty minutes, the next essay I would pull out from the pile would be Y/N's, with an estimate of five pages.

Although I had to check, it was very unlikely Y/N dropped the course. And not to my surprise when I checked the table, they haven't. There was no way, I saw them on their way out and smiled at me before leaving. 

It was tempting. I would dive into the first paragraph of their piece and finish it with unexpected astonishment, with little to no annotations, and a high grade. Y/N is just as dedicated to the outstanding beauties, mysteries and even histories of literature as I am, and they always prove it in their gifted and exceptionally crafted essays. It leaves me wanting more. 

I checked the time. 4:35 PM. I grabbed the rubric and a blue pen.

Y/N wrote about The Letters of Abelard and Héloïse. Their work never ceases to have me disinterested. I sat back down, intrigued by the piece that's not mentioned often in the curriculum, therefore I read her body paragraph like a mystery novel. 

In a way, I am glad I'm getting to read this now. It felt relieving to see a light at the end of the tunnel from the essays that acquired more effort and research... and a less obvious bare minimum of trying to fit the word count... maybe even less slang. 

But then I quickly averted my eyes back to where I trailed off - that I unwittingly read past without even taking it in for the first time. My heart fell to the pits of my stomach as I read the sentence in the second body paragraph that stood out the most. Then I read it a second time, then the third...