I’m early for my Creative Writing: Ideas and Practice class, which means I am sitting awkwardly alone in the room with our teacher, PJ Mayfield.

This is my heart class, the one I picked with hands shaking with guilt and trepidation, because I was doing it for pure enjoyment and that’s not what studying is supposed to be about. Enjoyment? Enjoyment is frivolous, and I am here to learn, to achieve, to figure out a serious career path. But every time I’ve stepped into the room for our creative writing class, I’ve had to bite back a smile of pure happiness at the prospect of being here, on campus, in a room with high ceilings, big windows and a general aura of importance and significance, with people who just want to talk about books and writing.

PJ Mayfield is an author. She wrote a very bleak, critically acclaimed book two years ago. I hadn’t heard of it, but I bought it when I saw she was in charge of the course. It’s very good, in that literary way where most of the characters are sad and depressed and say cruel things that are funny but not in a way I am comfortable with laughing at because I’m worried I don’t actually get it. There is a horrible scene in the middle of the novel involving the grisly death of a dog left alone in a hot car that made me put the book down for days and debate whether to keep reading or even take the class. Almost every review alludes to this scene, often with trigger warnings. ‘IF YOU LOVE DOGS, OR ANY ANIMAL, OR EVEN JUST SORT OF LIKE THEM, STAY AWAY FROM THIS BOOK!!!!!!’ wrote one Goodreads reviewer. I have to agree with them, and I almost liked their review, but then I’m worried PJ might be neurotic enough to monitor this kind of thing, and trace that like back to me.

PJ doesn’t seem bothered that I’m here early today. She’s reclining in her chair, eyes closed, her Blundstone-clad feet on the desk, balancing a book face-down and open on her chest. I would assume she was asleep except she stretches her neck from side to side occasionally. She is just firmly determined not to open even the slightest crack of opportunity for enthusiastic early arrivers to engage with her.