That Adult Newishness

I don’t know why I looked for my final grades that semester- I had a good idea of how they’d shake out.  I suppose I wanted to know how much my GPA was going to tank, manufacture some semblance of normal.  In the stead of a grade was an incomplete and with it, no updated GPA.  I wasn’t prepared for the professor telling me the incomplete would remain until I took the written part of the final.  I hadn’t taken any of my finals and this class was the only one without a final grade for the semester.  It was one of those times where, sure, I could fight it but it made sense to acquiesce- time was not on my side.  I wasn’t going to summer sessions so I only had a few days to pack, organize a ride home, and now, take a final.  I had reasons for not going to it in the first place, but I suppose that’s what I get.

‘You’ll be treated as an adult.’

‘This isn’t High School.’

Those statements had been repeated often since freshman year.  Although I was a newish adult, I was an adult all the same.  I was still waiting for this adult treatment everyone was alluding to- like the automatic zero for a final if I chose to not show up to take it.

Considering they make you leave during winter break, I’d ironed out most of the wrinkles with packing all my belongings.  That’s not the real hitch.  It’s that I wanted to go. home.   The time of year was the perfect on-boarding for summer work; tourist season’s about to pick up and my serving job is waiting for me.  If it’s a good summer, I can put a decent dent in the following school-year’s costs.   I’ll have a few days to decompress before resuming my continuing education in people’s capacity to be assholes to service industry employees.  All of it is familiarity I knew I needed.

But I need that grade.  I need a GPA for applications.  I need for this semester to be done.  And that doesn’t happen until I sit for this final, even if it’s long enough to write my name on the paper and hand it right back to the professor who made a pointed effort in our communications to 1) remind me that I couldn’t make up the oral portion and 2) highlight since I was going to be there, I should complete the final.

Irritation became quiet fury.

It wasn’t long ago that I had had enough of a particular teaching assistant.  Irked when they demanded instant respect trying to circumvent the ‘you earn it’ portion of that process.  Increasingly irritated at their unsolicited lectures to us about things outside of the lab.  Final-strawed at their unsolicited lecture about doing the reading, born from the umbrage that I never seemed complete that before the lab.

“Hey, this isn’t the only class I’m taking so it’s not the only reading I’m doing, and honestly? It’s less important compared to the other assignments. So it goes to the bottom of the pile.”

There was a time-seemed-to-stop kind of pause.  I don’t think they were used to people talking back.  They had that look on their face.

“You don’t like me much, do you?”

“I don’t like you at all, but I fail to see how that’s relevant to you grading my lab so I can leave and -maybe- get to this reading after I complete my other assignments.”

Said TA kept our interactions purely ‘business’ after that.  And it suited me fine.

Lab TA wasn’t the last time I had to speak up in the vein of ‘No, that’s not how this is going to go.’  It was new for me, but I seemed to navigate it well enough given Lab TA was my first trial run.  The gateway boundary definer if you will.

I show up at the agreed upon time and place.  I take the bundled papers, begin the exam breezing through it.  I spent no more than twenty minutes on it, once-over of the answers included.  My professor seems a bit surprised when I turn it in.  I ask how long would it take for the grade to post and in that small conversation it’s pointed out that it would have been posted had I shown up the day the final was scheduled.  My ometer isn’t yet finely tuned so I can’t place the feeling I have hearing the words, the tone.  It reminds me of the statements about treating us newish adults as adults, about the University not being High School and having yet to receive that adult treatment.  It was the communications preceding that moment demanding I take the final  and the air about them suggesting an ire that ‘I blew off their class.’

I never lose eye contact when I tell them, ‘My sister died.  Your exam isn’t a priority.’

I had spent two-thirds of the semester in the hospital with Zi-  information known to my professors.  I said nothing to them of Zi’s death, it wasn’t any of their damn business, it wasn’t for them to know.    Their demeanor changes in an instant.  They’ll post the grade as soon as they can.

I leave. Our ‘business’ is done.

When I check, my final grade is a B in spite of the melange of missing and late grades.

I managed to pass my classes though that’s not saying I learned.  I end up withdrawing the entire semester despite initial resistance; it felt like I was conceding my grief bested me.  Truth is it wasn’t besting in so much as commandeering my focus- I had lost family.  School would always be there. Zi, as life proved, would not. What I did learn came from a different school that semester:

Being in the room was enough.

A moment’s compassion can stay with you for a lifetime.

There’s no price on memory building when time isn’t on your side.