MARSTON ━︎━︎ PROFESSOR MARSTON

chapter eight - ❝office hours.❞

SYNOPSIS — In order to get a proper grade for their mended assignment, Y/N has to visit Professor Marston at his office for a more "private" setting.

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A N D R E W

MY LAST CLASS for the week was over, and I grew irritated for a moment in that lecture. I refused to let it defeat me, but it stuck with me for some reason until I realized the phenomena of modern technology. Is it ever so standardized that students started to grow less invested in their studies each year? It's got to be some kind of shift in society, or it's just the stress university had tolled upon these students?

I trailed off in my sentence about Francesco Petrarca when I saw a couple of students doing the one thing that annoyed most educators.

"The only screen that you all should be looking at right now is the projector behind me. Unless it's for educational purposes, phones off and out of sight," I said. "Now."

The students quickly reserved them. 

Though they are useful in modern society, I don't like to give in to such gadgets. But they're everywhere. I have a phone, and I use it when it's necessary. But today I learned that Chris got a smart watch, and I watched him reply to anyone by speaking into his wrist like he was an secret agent spy. I am in a complete void but also in fascination over how this world became so technological over the years. It's easy to learn about the Bubonic Plague. All you have to do is Google it, but in a time and place where there wasn't a professor and a projector in front of you to learn about it otherwise.

The realization took me when I became a professor at twenty-one. That was when wireless earbuds became a big thing. If he's out there working under a big company that does shady business on the side, I can picture my brother in a Tesla, and I highly doubt the maths professor would invest in one, whereas I would be sitting here with the faint taps of my laptop. If I was handed something more advanced than a smart watch, I doubt I would accept it. This generation wouldn't.

If a student pulled out their phone to record one of my lectures on voice memo, they'd also catch audio of something I'd say off topic, or I'd slip out something problematic or embarrassing. They could pull out their phones and film me without my consent if they wanted to. Hell, they could post it online somewhere for others to see. Comments would be hybrid: my appearance, my teaching, whatever I could be doing in that video is set out there on the Internet - and it stays there. 

It's not the modern technology, but the consequences of how we use them. And I'm directly and indirectly contributing to it. That's exactly what I'm worried about. Being caught and capturing it all on a little black screen. 

What could I possibly do that'll be caught on camera or audio? My views on a controversial topic perhaps? Or maybe me watching Y/N while they worked at their seat. I can't just dismiss the incidents - or events - like it was nothing. I say that with plurality. I kissed Y/N a week ago, they snuck into my office the week before. Whatever was going on through my head was just out of impulse, and something had ticked for me to breach the ethics of a professor and a student relationship. 

I do recall what I had told them just minutes before I let them go. "If you think something will come from this, you're mistaken. This was purely... an overflow of desire. Nothing more." I gave them a week to re-edit their assignment, to remove what they wrote that changed my perspective on them even more, or at least enhanced it.