The Conscience of Higher Education
Or, How I Learned to Quit Talking and Love College (Satire)
Sophie walked down the pale grey hallway with her chin parallel to the floor and her torso sharply perpendicular to it. She intentionally carried herself like this as a sort of exoskeleton that protected the soft and limp organs inside — or, more accurately, her spirit, which wilted a bit more with each step down the slick tile.
She turned and entered a small room walled with light green cinderblocks that looked rather like a seasick hospital. She was slightly late (if class wasn’t quite half over it was “slightly”), which meant she must make the perilous climb through a labyrinth of backpacks, Tupperware, water bottles, and human legs to reach her designated seat in the back corner.
Of course, no external authority compelled her to sit there, and she passed five empty chairs as she tiptoed around notebooks. The worst was scooting between the back of someone’s chair and the front of someone else’s desk. It was a like a skinniness test. But Sophie was driven by the insistent voice of her conscience — she must sit in that seat. It would be ridiculous (and highly improper) not to. That seat was hers from the fateful moment in syllabus week when she sat there to be as far away from the front as possible (in a room of only one hundred square feet). Mother had always told her that it was rude to walk in front of someone speaking at the front of the room, but Mother didn’t understand that one must follow one’s conscience even when inconvenient. Sophie had assumed the professor would understand, but she could feel him glaring at her. She looked down.
With a shift of the back and shoulders that would make a chiropractor cringe, she slid into her plastic seat and slid her backpack onto the floor in one awkward motion. Sophie looked around. About twenty people sat around her. The Orientation Leader had informed her group that these would likely be her best friends and one might even be a candidate for Spouse.
Sophie could feel the atmosphere of warm camaraderie already. The girl in front of her had so many friends that she scarcely bothered to make eye contact with anyone. Instead, she held her phone close to her desk and deliberately took pictures of her head at the most unflattering angle possible and sent them off to her many intimate connections. Sophia looked to her other side. The boy beside her was slumped in his chair with a bag of Cheetos that he steadily ate from. His gaze alternated between the instructor at the front, the blonde girl sitting two rows up, and the phone on his desk that he occasionally brushed his thumb over.
“Anyone?” Sophie jerked up to face the professor, then quickly slowed her movement so she wouldn’t look too interested.
“I said, ‘can someone give me an example of a British author?’” Austen. Defoe. Dickens. Her lips parted. Her conscience sprinted to the rescue. Will Jason think I’m a nerd? Those girls will think I’m showing off. I shouldn’t be a show-off. As she tilted her head back towards her desk her conscience whispered panicked instructions. Oh, that was the way to do it. She pulled her phone out of her bag and tapped the passcode. The tapping sent a surge of comforting normalcy through her. This is what fingers and eyes were made to do.
