A shy public reference librarian, and a college dropout who was disowned when she refused to submit to conversion therapy, encounter each other in a bookstore. He's been waiting his whole life for her. Meanwhile, she's starting her whole life over...
I write the check and sign my life over to the clerk at the counter. Unlike full-time students, who pay a flat rate tuition, my credit hours are multiplied by a dollar value and added to my matriculation fee and student activity fees. At least I'm able to pay for my eight credits of fall semester study on a monthly plan. I had to pay for the single composition course I took this summer up front.
Tuition indeed costs less than the rent for my old two-bedroom apartment. It would still be more than I could afford if I wasn't accepting Magister's help.
I do need to pay for my books and materials, but one nice thing about sticking to humanities courses is that the reading material is generally cheaper than science textbooks and career-oriented textbooks are. English literature, philosophy, and religion classes have particularly cheap reading material, at least, when it's the original classics rather than something put into a Norton anthology. Anthologies cost a little more.
Out of the air-conditioned climate of the Office of the Registrar, into the August heat. The campus bookstore awaits.
Classified as I am as a part-time, nontraditional student, I am not eligible for admittance into the honors college, which limits my choice selection somewhat, but I was still able to find an art history survey course yesterday when I picked out my courses for the upcoming semester at the registrar's office. It's a repeat of the course I took as a freshman at my last college, but the hours for the Introduction to Art History course were convenient. It should be an easy A. I already pretty much know the material. There had still been some space left in an upper-level course on existentialist philosophy, too, which I'll need to study formally sometime if I stay in my major, so I'd grabbed that before it was gone.
As it turns out, the Existentialism course uses cheap paperback reprints of the original writings of various philosophers, just like I'd expected it would. It doesn't even look like the books have been marked up any from the price I'd pay if I was buying them in a regular bookstore in one of our local malls.
The art history course has an expensive textbook, though. It's a different one from the one I had the last time I took an introductory survey course in art history, so I don't have the option of just using my old textbook like I'd hoped I could when I signed up for the class in the first place.
Maybe I can study in the bookstore for the first week or two until I can afford to purchase it. If that proves too difficult, I will ask Magister to pay for the book, then reimburse him – it still makes me feel awkward asking him for money, but I did agree months ago, after a long and emotionally painful discussion, that trying to do everything on my own is only acceptable when it does not hurt me. If my grades suffer, that constitutes harm, as harmful to me as starvation, freezing, and overwork.
And harming myself that way, it has been pointed out, makes it hard for him to trust me, especially when the harm would be prevented by my asking him for support that he can easily provide, and my trusting him to not look down on me for asking.
Harming myself is its own punishment, but its consequence is that I must earn back his trust.
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