Chapter Text
Slide after slide flickered by on the projector screen. Or they might as well have, the way Laura’s concentration was holding up. She blinked her eyes rapidly to readjust her focus and made sure that her jaw hadn’t been hanging open for the last ten minutes.
The current slide displayed a black and white photograph of a man wearing a frayed cravat, tufts of curly hair sprouting from the sides of his mostly bald head. Laura looked down at her notes. There was nothing she had absentmindedly jotted down that could possibly point to this man’s identity.
She tuned in to what her lecturer was saying: “... we can definitely say that Mill was one of the first philosophers to conceptualise our current political understanding of liberalism.”
Mill. Laura wrote it down. She tried her best to listen to the remainder of the lecture, writing down as much as she could on John Stuart Mill and his ideas on liberty, on natural rights, and his problematic views on colonialism and slavery.
The lecture concluded and people began moving out of the theatre. Frowning, Laura packed her things away. She was frustrated. It was her penultimate semester at university. She was a media studies major with a stellar GPA and a great record of extracurricular activities. But she couldn’t graduate without filling her second humanities elective. And, to her eternal misfortune, the only course that she was eligible for and that fit into her schedule was PHIL 239: Power and Political Thought.
It wasn’t that the course itself was awful. Their lecturer wasn’t just excellent, but warm and passionate and lacked the air of pretentiousness that Laura dreaded when it came to academics. There were about sixty other people in class, making it relatively small, and so far, none of the discussions had made her want to tear her hair out. What was making her want to do that was the content itself. There were so many questions, and not enough answers.
What was philosophy even for?
Even that question involved philosophy, and Laura doubted that she had the patience to get all metaphilosophical.
Thankfully, after her Tuesday philosophy lecture, Laura had an hour to grab something to eat. Before heading off for a three-hour shift at the information commons, she picked up a hot chocolate from the nearby café. She worked at the printing station, which was probably one of the cruisiest on-campus jobs. Unless the university’s network was having a meltdown, Laura didn’t have to do much but to make sure that the printers are always stocked with paper, keep track of how many ink and toner cartridges need to be ordered, and to call the technicians if any of the equipment broke down. It was easy money for four shifts a week.
Laura’s other major responsibility was to handle the printing and photocopying done by the staff that was charged to departmental accounts. Again, it wasn’t an unpleasant task. Most of the lecturers who came by were friendly enough and struck up eccentric conversations while waiting for their printing to finish, and she always got into solidarity chats over how hard university is with the teaching assistants. Based on the horror stories she heard from other people who worked on campus, her situation could be much worse.
She had just returned behind her desk after giving a first-year a crash course on how to operate the printers, when a dark-haired woman wearing a black dress strode in. Her regal, angular face twisted into a smirk when she spotted Laura. It was Carmilla.
“Great,” Laura muttered under her breath. Okay, she liked all of the TAs who did their printing and photocopying—except for one. And she happened to be walking towards her right now.
“Missed me, buttercup?” Carmilla asked.
Laura resisted the urge to roll her eyes at one of Carmilla’s stupid names for her. “Killing even more trees today, Carmilla?” she asked.
“The trees are already dead,” Carmilla retorted. She handed Laura a flash drive. “It’s called ‘Worksheet Tutorial 3’. Forty-four copies, please.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Laura said. Forty-four students! That was probably one of the bigger numbers she heard this semester. Laura made a mental note to never become a TA. “Seriously, though. You’re here, like, every day.”
“Nah, only when my favourite printing station attendant is around.”
“I guess I should be flattered that I’m your favourite.” But she really wasn’t.
“Yeah, nobody ever seems to regard me with disdain as you do,” Carmilla said. “Honestly, it makes me feel pretty special.”
Laura sighed and just got on with her work. That was why. She hated to admit it, but Carmilla was attractive, and she was the kind of person who knew just how attractive she was. Too bad that this probably contributed to her being an obnoxious and a generally unpleasant person.
Carmilla leaned over the desk, making a show of peering at Laura’s work terminal. “Don’t forget to charge it to the department of philosophy!” she teased.
“I know,” Laura said, not even bothering to look at Carmilla. The fact that she was a TA for a discipline that Laura was not having fun in did not win her any points. Once the job was finished, Laura placed the handouts in a plastic sleeve that Carmilla slid across the desk for her.
Carmilla took the stack of handouts and smiled at Laura, as if she hadn’t been on the receiving end of Laura’s bad vibes for the last five minutes. “Thanks, buttercup,” she said. “See you real soon.”
“All right!” There were students inside the printing station, so Laura forced a smile, and continued through gritted teeth: “I’m not looking forward to it.”
It was 5:15pm by the time Laura walked out of the information commons. She quickened her pace as she crossed campus to one of the smaller cafés by the School of Humanities. She could feel herself relaxing as she entered and saw Danny seated at their usual table, an untouched slice of pie and two cups of tea already laid out in front of her.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” Laura said as she placed her things on the floor and sat down across from Danny. “Perry asked me to take the recycled paper down to the sheds just before my shift ended.”
Danny looked up from the reader that she was annotating and beamed. “That’s okay! I kinda just got here too,” she said. “Look, tea’s still hot.”
“Great,” Laura said. “Thanks for this.”
“You’re welcome,” Danny said. “How was work?”
Laura shrugged. “The usual.” She stirred sugar in her tea. “What about you? How’s being a TA?”
“I wish I could say that it’s great, but… first-years send the dumbest emails.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’re not that bad.”
Danny shook her head. “No, Laura, you don’t understand,” she said. “Some of it is the most obtuse shit I’ve ever seen in my life. You know, high school teachers have a lot to answer for. These kids come to university way too coddled.”
“It’s still good money.” Laura had a forkful of cherry pie. “I’m not looking forward to when deadline season arrives though. Imagine how many crying first-years I’d have to deal with when printers stop working for whatever reason.”
“And then you’ll understand what I say about them being dumb,” Danny said.
“Who knew you could be so unkind?” Laura joked.
“I’m not being unkind,” Danny said. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I like the teaching part of being a TA, I just don’t like the part where they talk to me like I’m the babysitter who’s supposed to hold their hand through this transition from high school to university. Didn’t they come here to get their first taste of independence?”
“Well, independence can be bitter. Can’t blame them for being scared.”
Danny rolled her eyes. “Don’t I know it,” she said. “But at the same time, it’s pretty great! No teachers breathing down your neck, no oddly specific grading rubrics… you don’t even have to turn up to class! University is a great way to test out whether you can handle being a somewhat functioning adult, and some of these students are failing.”
“I don’t think I could’ve survived my first year without my TAs, though,” Laura said. “They were just so reassuring, and I wasn’t even the kind of first-year who incessantly emails them.”
Danny’s expression relaxed. Her blue eyes shone as they met Laura’s. “I somehow find that very hard to believe, Hollis,” she said.
Laura broke eye contact by drinking her tea. “Which reminds me, I should probably go to my TA’s office hours this week,” she said. “I’m scared that I’ll fall behind in this one class.”
“Oh?” Danny swallowed a bite of pie. “Which one?”
“The political philosophy class that I need to take for my humanities elective,” Laura said.
Danny cringed. “Sounds like a bore,” she said. “You should’ve taken the Russian literature course instead. I know the TA for that one.”
“Yeah, I wish, but it didn’t fit in with my media papers,” Laura said. “And the class isn’t boring. The lecturer is pretty great, actually.” She chewed on the inside of her cheek. “It’s just… philosophy involves so much navel-gazing, doesn’t it?”
“It does!” Danny laughed. “No, you’re right, it totally does. I took two philosophy courses in undergrad and I enjoyed them both a lot, though.”
“How?”
“I read the books. From the library,” Danny replied simply. “Like, having the actual, physical weight in my hands made me feel how important this ‘navel-gazing’ actually is. Once you get past the self-importance and the florid language you see that these are explanations that people have tried to give on how the world works. I mean, we wouldn’t be studying them if they weren’t important, right?”
“Right.” Laura nodded. “So your advice to me is to read the books.”
“Yeah.” A firm assurance snuck into Danny’s tone. “Go to the library, and read the books. Feel those covers in your hands, those yellowed pages? I think you’d find it a more engaging experience than just reading off a photocopied reader or a PDF.”
Laura figured that it was worth a try.
After an hour or so of conversation, Danny excused herself to attend a Summer Society meeting, and Laura, who was just going to take the bus back to her apartment, decided to go to the library. She walked back and forth amidst the floor to ceiling shelves of philosophy texts when she found what she was looking for: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill.
She pulled the book out from its place on the shelf. It clearly hadn’t been moved in ages, for a small cloud of dust was expelled. She thought about how the book felt in her hands. The caked on dust on the cover felt unpleasant on her palms. She flicked through the pages. Even under the stark fluorescent light, the text was too grainy, the print too small.
If this was the engaging experience that Danny valued so much, then Laura was totally not suited for philosophy. She reshelved the book. She’d try again another day. She had to, if she wanted to graduate. But right now, she just wanted to go home.
The apartment was quiet when she arrived. This wasn’t unusual; her roommate, chemistry major Betty, was, for a lack of a better word, uptight. They met through a girl Laura had dated briefly towards the end of first year. Although Betty wasn’t what Laura called a friend back then, she knew that she made the right choice when she accepted Betty’s offer to rent the second room at an off-campus apartment halfway through their second year. She was clean, quiet, and unobtrusive. She was only ever home to sleep, eat and shower.
“Bets?” Laura called out. “I’m home!”
Betty’s bedroom door creaked open, and her head—blonde hair tied into a bun—poked out. “Hey, Laura,” she said. “I’ve got to finish this fifteen-page report by midday tomorrow, so is it okay if I don’t sit with you for dinner? The pasta bake’s keeping warm in the oven. I already ate.”
“That’s totally fine,” Laura said. She could count the number of times that she and Betty sat together for dinner on one hand. “Thanks for cooking.”
“Well,” Betty shrugged, “it was my turn. Okay, I better get back to my report.”
Laura raised her hand in an awkward wave. “All right, see you on the other side.” She watched Betty shut her door and listened to the telltale sounds of the chair scraping back, followed by frantic typing. Just another weekday at Chez Spielsdorf and Hollis.
She fixed herself a bowl of the pasta bake and ate in silence. When she finished, she put her dishes away and loaded the dishwasher. She took a shower before finally settling at her desk to start readings for her other classes.
Just under an hour later, Laura fired up her laptop to do a cursory check of her email. Nothing there. She checked her Facebook and Twitter. Same old, same old. And against her better judgment, she went on Tumblr. She scrolled down past the usual: fandom GIFsets, social justice, book quotes, pretentious photographs of flowers…
She reblogged a cool piece of Orphan Black fanart. Seconds later, a notification popped up on the corner of her dashboard: foucaultofyou reblogged your post.
Foucault? That name was familiar. Laura dug through the pile of papers on her desk until she found the syllabus for PHIL 239. Under the required reading list was a chapter from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison—by Michel Foucault!
Intrigued, Laura clicked to open foucaultofyou’s blog in a new tab. The theme was simple, even austere. On the sidebar was a black and white photograph of a short-haired, middle-aged woman in a leather jacket. The description below read: 23. Lesbian. Austria. I like philosophy and TV. When I grow up, I want to be half as cool as Judith Butler.
Laura browsed the blog. It was mostly stills of artsy independent films, photographs of cityscapes and graffitied walls, and GIFsets from popular television shows. Under #thoughts were multiple text posts of moderate length. The first one was entitled “Orphan Black: a showcase in Foucauldian Biopower”. The rest of the posts seemed equally pretentiously titled, but they were well-written and the philosophy actually made sense.
After reading “The patriarchal panopticon of Pretty Little Liars”, Laura made her decision. She clicked on the link to foucaultofyou’s ask box. She flexed her fingers as the page loaded. And then she typed:
Hi there! I think we’ve been following each other for a while, but your url caught my eye today so I decided to check your blog out further. I thought your posts on the philosophy in TV shows and films were super interesting. I was wondering if you could help me out with this philosophy course I’m taking at university. I’m struggling with the fiddly bits at the moment and the midterm is next week…
Laura sent the message and willed herself to turn her attention back to her readings. Twenty minutes later, she refreshed her Tumblr and there was a message in her inbox. “Oh god.” With bated breath, she clicked on the envelope.
It was a reply from foucaultofyou:
Hey there. What kind of philosophy are you doing in class? I was a philosophy major in undergrad but now my thesis is purely concentrated on political philosophy, so I guess that’s my specialisation. But as long as it’s not philosophical logic (my weakness, I admit), I’m happy to help you.
Jackpot. Laura grinned at her laptop screen as she thought of what to say. If this goes well, then she might never have to step inside the philosophy section of the university library again.