I was the pathetic professor with an unhealthy obsession with his student. Not even thirty, and I was already burned out from the education system—too young to be taken seriously by any of my colleagues in academia, so when my obvious desire for a student became public, it cost me the respect of every educator in the college. Still, she was worth the price, and she, unbothered, held her head high the very next semester on that same campus when she became faculty herself. She silenced the whispers with singular looks, and suddenly, I didn’t feel so weak anymore.
