These weren’t her regular office hours, and technically, Deja wasn’t even supposed to be on campus on Fridays. She was normally home, puttering around her apartment trying to work on her articles, not making any progress, and then sinking into a comfortable pit of self-loathing just in time to spend the weekend stressed out. Her Friday schedule was usually packed tight with sitting at her computer for half an hour at a time, writing a few words, deleting more words, and then taking hour-long breaks to be self-loathing on social media, or reading a novel, or best of all, having a breakdown about her career while on the phone with her best friend.

The point was that Deja had plans, and she’d rather be at home feeling bad about herself than listening to her student make a case for a grade they both knew he didn’t deserve, but this was the only day her student — who came to class so infrequently Deja could place his face but not his name — could meet, so here she was.

They’d been at this conversation for almost half an hour; Deja had been watching the clock very closely. The student kept circling around an issue Deja was certain they’d handled in the first five minutes…but apparently not.

They were barely two months into the semester, and Sheldon — that was his name! — had missed a cumulative two weeks of class and hadn’t turned in the first essay that was due over a month ago. He’d ignored Deja’s emails trying to find out if he was okay and needed extra help, and when he did come to class, he made sure to skip out as soon as the lecture was over. Deja was on the verge of suggesting that he drop her class when he’d emailed yesterday, desperate to meet. She had been hopeful that the meeting would be productive, in vain, apparently.

Sheldon had shown up with his very late essay in hand and a smug smile on his face that had disappeared when Deja explained that she couldn’t, in all fairness, accept a paper so late without a reasonable explanation for its tardiness, nor would she excuse absences without that and some kind of documentation.

After five minutes of a story about how hard Sheldon’s other classes were and how he’d thought Deja’s intro course would be a “cakewalk”, Deja — insulted but still professional — had asked again for explanations for some, or any, of his absences and the extremely late coursework, to no avail. Instead, Sheldon had launched into a story about a math class he’d failed a year ago, and Deja had mentally checked out. She had one eye on the clock on her desk phone and the other on her inbox, waiting for her pre-arranged exit from this conversation and the other reason she was unfortunately on campus this Friday.