I Sent The Wrong Message To My Professor

Junior year. 8 AM lecture. Professor Kim was the kind of person who wore a tie to a 9-person seminar and graded participation with a rubric. I was texting my friend during class. Not proud of it. But we had a group chat specifically dedicated to complaining about this class, and I had things to say. I typed out a full paragraph. Detailed. Specific. Something along the lines of how this lecture was the academic equivalent of watching paint dry, how I had learned more from a single Wikipedia article than the past three weeks combined, and a fairly creative description of how I felt about the mandatory 8 AM start time. I hit send. The chat went quiet for about four seconds. Then my friend replied with just: "…you sent that to him." I looked at my phone. I had opened the wrong chat. The one that said "Prof Kim" at the top. The one I had used exactly once, two weeks ago, to ask about an essay deadline. I sat in the front row. He was standing six feet away from me. I watched him slow down mid-sentence, glance at his phone on the podium, read it, and then look up directly at me with an expression I can only describe as deeply, personally tired. He didn't say anything. He just continued the lecture. I spent the next forty-five minutes staring at a fixed point on the wall, fully leaving my body, and doing the kind of bargaining with the universe that you only do when something is completely irreversible. After class he asked me to stay behind. I considered dropping out. He looked at me for a long moment and then said, very calmly: "The essay deadline is Friday. And for what it's worth — the 8 AM was not my idea either." Then he picked up his briefcase and left. I got an A minus in that class. To this day I don't know if it was mercy or spite. Honestly, both feel deserved.

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