It’s quiet. Too quiet for the day after I’ve released the results of the students’ assignments. Normally, there’s a veritable train of students undergoing various stages of disappointment: denial (‘can you read it again?’), anger (‘what would you know!’), bargaining (‘if I could just re-submit…’), and depression (‘I might as well give up the course’). Somehow, they never reach the fifth stage: acceptance. Here it is, nearly lunch time, and I’ve been able to write the introduction to our research team’s latest research paper without the intrusion of a succession of tentative taps on my office door.
Mystified, I wander along the corridor to my colleague’s office. As usual, her door is wide open.
‘Oh, are you skiving off for coffee, again?’ Charlotte asks.
That’s what Charlotte always says. Charlotte drinks tea, green, weak, with a dash of cold water, no sweetener – she brings it from home in special container.
‘Any students asking for me?’ I ask.
‘Only a few who were having trouble with the ambiguity in the assignment question you set them. but I managed to sort them out without bothering you. I know how hard you’re working on that introduction. It’s taking you such a long time,’ she says. ‘I gave my methods section to Professor James a few days ago. He says that the team is only waiting on your section now.’
I consider whether I’m meant to thank her.
I decide against it. ‘Well, I’ve finished now, so I can see any students who come looking. I’ll leave my door open, okay?’
I forego my coffee and sit in my office, waiting.
The sound of shuffling feet approaches. Depression, I anticipate.
The soft murmur of voices.
And further up the corridor, Charlotte’s door closes as she draws the next fly into her web.
