The Highest Learning

Chapter 5-Enter Suzanne

As he is packing his things to leave the lecture hall, he notices that one student is still standing off to the side of the room. It's Ms. Munn. She is probably in her early 20's, but looked as if she was still a teenager.

She had been relatively quiet in class since the start of the semester, and he hasn't interacted with her much before, but he recognizes her face, just as he could pick out any of the students who regularly attend his class. She didn't ask many questions in class, but she always got perfect, or near perfect scores on his exams, which was not an easy task. She's been an "A" student since birth.

Suzanne is one of the students whose Mommy and Daddy aren't rich. She's taking classes at the community college while she works as a cashier at the local Wawa to save up money in the hopes of eventually transferring to an Ivy League school.

She is an English Literature major, but is taking A and P to fulfill a science requirement. There are far easier classes she could have taken to do this, but she wants the challenge, is interested in the human body, and thinks it will look better on her transcript when she eventually transfers to a more prestigious school. She had to get special permission to take the class, because usually a student must have completed several science prerequisites before taking A and P.

What allows her to get good grades, work at her job as a cashier, do extracurricular activities, and go to the gym for her daily yoga classes is that no part of her day isn't structured or unplanned. She even goes so far as to schedule blocks for exactly when she will have what is labeled in her passion planner as, "leisure time".

She has a round face with soft features. She has straight blonde hair that was pulled tightly into a bun with a black hair tie. A few stray hairs didn't quite make it into the bun and drop to the sides of her face. She clearly didn't have time to spend all day getting ready. She possesses wide, blue eyes, likely stuck that way from the stress of hours of staying up late studying.

Everything about her appearance indicates that she is up tight and high strung before her personality can. She's wearing turtle shell glasses, that conveyed a message of "look how studious I am", as if the rest of her appearance didn't do that for her already. She doesn't even wear lipstick on her always, slightly pursed lips. She does like to polish her toenails though, which are covered by her shoes. As a feminist, she's convinced herself that wearing toe polish is not hypocritical, because she is doing it for herself, not for the approval of men or society.

She's wearing a tight denim skirt that ends right below the knee and a pink sweater on top of a white blouse. She can't afford name brand clothes and wears fake diamond stud earrings. She is clinging to her oversized fake designer bag that is pressed tightly against her chest. She seems to have no self-awareness of how anxious and frigid she looks.

As a finishing touch, Suzanne has on black heels to top off her ice princess ensemble that she is trying to pull off. It is a bit hypocritical, because heels are footwear that could be considered feminine, but not feminist. They make a woman's legs look good, but functionally, they're not good for a woman's mobility or joints.

Despite her high-strung look, she is very attractive, even for Mr. Hardwick's former jock status standards, but he makes it a point to keep things professional with his students. That is, when he's not feeding them filthy study tools.

She appears as if she is trying to act subtle, but he could definitely tell that she is waiting to pounce on him, possibly to discuss something she didn't understand in class. More than likely though, she'll probably complain about the horrible injustice she feels she suffered during class when he dared to speak such foul language.