Love from London by Emily Franklin

Author:Emily Franklin [Franklin, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-5222-0
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-09-27T21:41:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

In Poppy Massa-Tonclair’s office (note to self: though she is aware of her moniker, one should not refer to her as such during face-to-face contact), I watch her as she reads my essay. By now I’m fairly used to our tutorials, the one on one sessions where she reads my papers right in front of me, often articulating my words back so I can hear the finer points I’ve made (or the drivel).

“You have a knack for tying things up very neatly,” Poppy says without taking her eyes off my paper. She likes you to go back and make written comments, thoughts, points to add, prior to handing over the paper, and I can see where she is by what I’ve noted.

“Is that a bad thing?” It’s one of those questions I ask semi-rhetorically, probably in the hopes she’ll respond with something like no, it’s a great thing, and my academigods smile down on me.

Instead, she furrows her brow which makes her face look just like Keena’s, only with some crinkles by the eyes and strands of gray woven into the dark mass of hair piled loosely on the very top of her head (not so much a bun as a donut). “You’re at the stage in life where neatness has its own special appeal. If everything’s tidy, nothing bad can happen. Order equals control.”

I open my mouth to protest but find myself taking notes. Order=control. “Perceived control,” I say. She’s totally right. “But in academics it seems like part of the point is to tie it all up, make connections, merge themes of migration to evolution or marginalization of women to work force ideologies…”

“Listen to yourself!” PMT laughs. “You’ve spent far too long in classes and you’re only what — seventeen?” I nod. “I’m not saying you need to go out on the street and forget everything you’ve learned, I just don’t want to see you turn into a looking glass.”

“You mean like the second part of Alice in Wonderland?”

“No. Not like that — a looking glass only reflects the object in front of it, and it would destroy such a wonderful part of you if all you did was spew back someone else’s theories and words.”

“I didn’t think I was guilty of that,” I say. I’m starting to feel like crap so I take a breath and ask, “Am I just completely unoriginal?”

PMT puts my paper on her desk and opens one of the wooden drawers. Pulling out a folder, she shows me a couple of earlier papers I wrote, plus something else. “Recognize this?”

“Where’d you get that?” I ask and reach for the note. It’s a sort-of letter slash commentary I wrote to Keena during a particularly boring lecture on the history of British parliament. I wanted to find it interesting, but I didn’t — partly because I couldn’t hear the speaker very well, and partly because — well, just because I want to be super well-rounded and interested in everything, doesn’t mean I am.

PMT lets me have the paper.

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