Two Crows Watch from the Gallows Tree (part 17)

(Oh god that guy sounds a bit oof
I wouldn't appreciate that)

"Don't be." He kept walking.

(Yeah that’s fair ^^ he definitely wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea lol he went hard on me because he knew I found him funny but some of my friends really hated him lol)

“… yes sir.” This was awkward. Kieran wished he would have kept his mouth shut entirely.

He reached the top of the stairs. "Do either of you like to read?"

(Yeah professors like that are hit or miss. I can see how it would be friendly banter but I like to have a more friendly repertoire with my professors)

(Totally valid ^^ I had a bio prof my sophomore year where the first day of class he really embarrassed me and I spent a solid month actively hating him lol I now adore him and realize he’s just hella socially awkward and didn’t intend to nor realize that he embarrassed me. He’s a super solid dude tho and turned into a great mentor for me later on but we definitely started off on the wrong foot)(and then there’s a math prof that I hate with every fiber of my being lol that man thrived on social anxiety. Ours, to be exact. I was the last class he ever taught before he retired so he gave no fucks and he’d be mid lecture working through a problem and then suddenly whirl around and point at someone random and be like “then what do you do?” And if you were the first person you felt like a complete dumb fuck and panicked and he’d let you flail for like three seconds then point at the person next to you and ask them. Once he got to the third or fourth person you realized none of us knew and it wasn’t just you but it was fucking hell being the first person in line and he did it all semester long and it was awful. And to make matters worse he would sporadically change where he started every time. So like couldn’t even be like “oh he hit the row ahead of me a minute ago he may come for me next” or even like “oh he just hit my row I’m safe the rest of class” no he changed it up every single time so you had no idea how many times you’d be called on in one class period or how many class periods you may go in between without being called on. I cried so much in that class lol)

“…I can only read in Rhaebakian, sir,” Kieran admitted.

(That math professor sounds like an utter asshole but I'm glad you get along with the bio guy now!)

(There's a professor I almost took for next semester who has a reputation for being very difficult. My dad knows her cuz she's in his field of study and they both teach at my college. He's not a big fan and neither are the students I talk to.)

"Ah. Well, we have books in that language as well. We have books in every language."

(yeah he was awful lol he's the only professor I ever ended up confronting in all my years of schooling and it was intense haha I think I've mentioned I have dyscalculia which is numbers dyslexia. I was "homeschooled" but not the good way my mom would just give me books and tell me to go learn and let me take control of my own education from the age of eleven which is fucking insane lol but because of that I never got past algebra because she would neither help me nor get me help. So I ended up trying like 6 different algebra curriculums in high school and that was the entirety of my math education. Nothing higher. And then I had to take trig at a college level with this asshole.
To make matters worse he only held office hours at 7 am and I usually worked/studied until 3 am because I'm a night owl and that's when I could focus so it was super hard getting help from him.
So I was doing absolutely horrible in this class, doing every single extra credit opportunity he gave me and still getting D's on all the tests (spoiler: I am not a D student and this was an absolutely horrific blow to my already fragile ego lol).
It got to the point where I would just sit and literally physically cry during every test. Like I'd be quiet lol idk if any of my classmates ever noticed but he definitely saw me literally wiping away tears as I got D's and F's on the tests. And the university wouldn't give me accommodations because I don't have documentation of my disability and it cost $2k for them to test me? I still don't understand how it's that outrageously expensive but I didn't have the money so I just had to do my best which was objectively not good enough.
Anyhow. It all came to a head half-way through the semester when after math class one day I was in the hallway talking to my then-crush and my math prof walks up behind me and goes "Sarah! That midterm was bad. Come see me tomorrow." Then walks off. I was humiliated. And thankfully the guy I had a crush on was a super, super kind dude and also dumb jock type so I actually helped him a ton in bio the semester before and he viewed me as the "smart one" so he was super sympathetic and encouraging and gracious about it. But I was pissed. That was incredibly out of line. Like. Email me. Catch me before or after class. Leave a note on my desk. Idk. There are tons of ways to tell me you want to talk to me without announcing I did bad in front of a big group of my friends which happened to include my crush.
I absolutely viewed that as a declaration of war lol
So then math class just became a seeth-with-anger-for-50-minutes exercise for me as I had to deal with this man I now actively hated lol And one day I was having a bad day already before class and the prof decides to pull his bullshit on me and point at me and go "what now?!" and I just go ">.> I don't know." and usually he would just move on to the next student if you said you didn't know but he decided to pick a fight and went "yes you do! C'mon! Think about it a second!" and I repeat that I. Don't. Know. and he won't drop it. And I go "I. Don't. Know. I've been lost the past fifteen minutes I have no idea whatsoever what's going on."
And the classroom was like deathly quiet and he just stared at me for a solid five seconds then goes "...does... anyone else... feel that way?" and glanced around and there were a few hesitant head nods and he goes "... alright, then. Backing up fifteen minutes!" and to his credit he went back and re-taught the material lol
it totally changed the classroom culture after that ngl. Like after that every single class period after that at least one person would raise their hand and go "I don't know what's going on!" or "I don't understand!" and it was actually a lot more of a back and forth with people being vocal when they didn't understand and the dynamics got a lot better. As someone who has now taught he probably appreciated that shift lol but whew boy it was tense and my friends in the class all informed me that my cajones were massive after that class period haha)
(And oof yeah that's not a good sign at all >.> some people really shouldn't be teachers)

"That's neat!" Kieran smiled a little.

Derik nodded in agreement. "It'd probably be good for you to get in a bit of practice. We don't want you forgetting everything you've learned so far."

"Yes sir." Kieran nodded.

(That's fucking brave of you dude, good going. I don't think I could do that)
(This one is just a snooty academic with no sense of humor and takes herself too seriously)

"A man here is excellent with languages," Gaius said. "He's fluent in quite a few. If you want to learn to speak any I'm sure he could help. And I can teach reading in many as well."

(haha I still don't know what came over me tbh that's not like me at all lol but I think it was a net positive ^^ I had a 68% in that class after the final even after all the extra credit he offered and it was technically a major class since I'm a stem major and I was going to have to retake the class and was going to lose a several-thousand-dollar merit scholarship because of it which added to the stress lol but he put my grade in as a C- and we never spoke of it again haha got to keep my scholarship and not repeat the class so I think he respected it, all things considered ^^)

"Oh, I wouldn't want to be a bother," Kieran said quickly. "But that's very kind of you, sir. Thank you."

(Ha get got)

"No bother at all."

(haha yep. Turns out if you try your damndest and cry a lot sometimes old fuckers will grow a sliver of a heart and round you up to a grade you don't deserve lol)
(altho I think I could have earned a C- legitimately had I been given appropriate accommodations sooooo depends on how you wanna look at it haha I can do math the numbers just jump around a lot and I need to double-check my work like five times to be sure I didn't transpose any numbers or write an equation out of order etc. People always tell me to just practice more but I would do like hundreds of practice problems and be able to get from like fifteen minutes per problem down to like 4 minutes per problem, never any faster than that. And he'd give us about 1 minute per problem. So I could answer the first quarter of the test really accurately and then fail almost all the rest of the questions because I'd have like five minutes left and just fly through writing things down as fast as I could and hoping for partial credit. So I think he saw that I could do it I just didn't have the time. Gotta love classism and not giving poor students accommodations)(wasn't his fault. It was a university policy)

Kieran nodded. "...I'm honestly not very good at reading in Rhaebakian yet." Another language would just be disasterous.

(Whoop sorry my phone died)
(Wasn't there like a Student Disability Services thing on campus?? We have that here)

"We can work on that if you need, then. Or someone else can help."

(oop hate that for you lol)
(I went to this private religious uni that was high level cult lol I went to the student disabilities services and they said they wouldn't give accommodations unless I had official documentation and said it would cost around $2k to get tested and that the test may or may not show I needed help and honestly not to hold my breath because I was an A/B student in literally all of my other classes so they didn't believe I had a learning disability. Basically told me to pony up a few grand or go away)(I suspect that the test would have shown the disability in retrospect and helped greatly. But my dad was on SSI disability and my mom had always been a sahm with health issues of her own. They didn't have the money to spend $2k to get a paper that said I couldn't do math well. They also weren't the most supportive of my major (at the time, they're really supportive now. But at the time they didn't think I was cut out to be a biologist) and said if I couldn't pass a math class maybe I wasn't cut out for this major after all. So... yeah. I was kinda screwed lol)
(on the plus side during my PhD I mentored an undergrad with dyslexia and ended up getting to advocate for him and telling profs to fuck off when he made little spelling errors and I feel like I am uniquely suited to understanding how difficult life for people with dyslexia/dyscalculia and now have a place of privilege which is nice. #madeit ?)

"Yes, sir." Kieran nodded. "Jerica's been teaching me... but... we've been traveling so... kind of fell to the wayside and would probably be good for me to practice again soon... Do you happen to have anything on animals?"

(Aw man
I'm so glad you've made it though! That sounds really rewarding; that student probably really appreciated your support. Mentors end up meaning so much to youngsters (saying that as a youngster myself).)

Gaius smiled slightly and stopped outside the library doors. "Have you set foot in here yet, my boy?"

( :') We have a really sweet professional relationship now it warms my heart haha he is currently a first-year PhD student in the lab I left so we unfortunately didn't get to overlap at a grad level but I helped him get an internship and helped him with his resume/personal statement and I'm so fucking proud of him. Like he's super smart and it's all him. But I still like to pretend like I had a hand in it haha)

"No sir." Kieran shook his head, glancing at the door.

(Aw that's so nice!!)

Gaius opened it, holding the door for him and Derik.

(If you want I'd love to see how Jerica interacts with Septimus's room)