#if i was going to american university this was be my college thesis. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

writings-of-a-hufflepuff · 2 years ago

Text

Character: Indiana Jones

Warnings/Important info: Fem reader, implied English or at least has been to Oxford University. Angsty, miscommunication.

Notes: I watched Indiana Jones the other day and obviously my first crush never leaves because young Harrison Ford as an archaeologist adventurer is just *chefs kisses*

It's bizarre really, potentially concerning, worrying to a degree, that after 5 years you know the back of his head from a glance. Suffice to say you try not to draw attention to yourself when you recognise who stands mere meters away from you talking to two of his students about antiquarianism.

Maybe you should have expected it, after all Henry Jones seemed to have a way of haunting you. Maybe you should have been prepared to see him, despite assuming that the United States was so vast that your move from the University of Oxford to Marshall College as a newly qualified Doctor of History would certainly not guarantee seeing him. Perhaps, it was the Moirai, the fates, trying to test your resolve or simply coincidence.

But, after five years without a single letter, a single telephone call or telegram, you certainly weren't keen to stick around and have a conversation with the man. Besides, you had lectures to teach, students to help, papers to grade (okay, maybe not the last one considering it was in fact the very first day of the academic year).

It is with a sharp back peddle that has you careering into a pair of students behind you with a clipped apology that you make your daring escape and it is a surprised call of your given name that has you freezing, turning about face and responding with a strangled "It's actually Dr. Y/L/N now."

"What? I'm not allowed to call you by your name anymore? Guess you've already recinded the right to call you Honey Bee too." There are students stopping to watch, what feels like the entire student body eager to watch the new History professor and the most loved Archaeology professor at each other's throats. A mystery arising from their familiarity and a curiosity at what history lay between the two. You certainly weren't eager to put on a show.

With a flick of the wrist you smooth down your skirt, turning on your heels and walk away calling out to him, "It was a pleasure to see you again, Dr Jones." It leaves Indiana gaping in the centre of the quad, watching the sway of your hips and the click of your shoes on the pavement as you leave him behind.

You choose to ignore the bubble of anxiety it puts in the pit of your stomach all day. Your lectures help to distract you at least somewhat from the reality that your former...you're not even sure what to call him...something, is present and working at the same university as you and you briefly wonder if it isn't too late to go back to your job at Oxford. You're sure Professor Haylett would let you come back, you might need to grovel a bit but...perhaps that was preferable to the potential mess that was being in close proximity to Henry again.

The last time you'd see each other, he'd been a 27 year old Archaeology professor. Young, dashing, charming, with every student at the University of London eager to please him and hoping the American would give them extra attention. You had been a 23 year old History PhD student, one of the few women allowed to do so, after much hard graft and determination. You had refused to let anything or anyone distract you from your studies, from your goal...and then you'd been told that he could help you with your PhD, that he had some specific knowledge on the Battle of Syracuse that you could use and...you'd found yourself suitably distracted. You would be being bitter and unfair if you didn't admit that in the year you'd known him he'd helped you with your thesis immensely...but he'd also put your reptuation at risk, broken your heart and made promises that he never would fulfil. Your mother was right...romance was certainly a tricky business.

You're so frazzled at the end of the day that you don't even recognise that your office has the lights on, if you had, you would have stopped before entering, instead you bulldozer your way in and stumble at the sight of him sat in a chair waiting paitently as if he wasn't phased one bit by your reappearance in his life.

"So, Honey Bee, you gonna tell me why I get such a frosty reception?"

"Yo-The absolute...I cannot...ugh!" You find yourself unable to stutter out a complete sentence as you slam the door shut, it reverberating on its hinges. "You have some nerve, Henry Jones! As if you don't bloody know!" You storm around him, putting the hard wood desk between the two of you and shuffling papers to keep from looking at him knowing he'd melt your anger in a second just with a smile.

He always had the most ridiculous ability to placate you and you wanted to feel angry today, not soothed like a skittish horse or malcontent cat.

"Sweetheart, if I knew I wouldn't have asked!" It's the silky smoothness giving away to frustration that causes you to look up, your bottom lip shuddering under the weight of the sadness that sits in your chest, old feelings that you thought you'd processed and put to bed coming to the surface.

"You promised..." He's silent, confusion deepening as you take a deep breath and begin to pace back and forth behind your desk, agitation growing with each movement. "You promised to write me, to call or send a telegram and you never did. I...I waited to hear from you and I heard nothing. So I am dreadfully sorry, Henry, if I do not feel particularly like pleasentries or intimiate nicknames in front of an entire cohort of students! I have had to earn my place and I am still fighting for respect and no man, one who doesn't even honor his promises, is going to ruin this for me!"

You are breathing heavily, body warm, shoulders rising and falling with every agitated movement of your lungs as he looks down at his lap. Silence falls between you for so long that you turn to look out the window of your office, at the street lamps with their warm glow, the last few students wandering across campus as evening sets in.

"I did...I wrote you." His voice is low, quiet, the sort of quiet that Henry Jones never was, so quiet in fact that you turn to check he actually spoke.

"I wrote every day for three months...half of it was stupid, five lines about my day or a single sentence to say hello. I wrote for three months, sweetheart."

"Three months?"

"Three."

"But, I never...how...if you wrote for three months then how on earth did I not receive a single one!" You're unsure if you believe him, at the same time you never knew Henry to be a liar and it...it boggles your mind. There's an impending sense of your world teetering on it's axis, emotional whiplash as you feel a soaring sense of hope, yet a feeling of disbelief, fear, all rolled into one.

"I don't know, honey, but I wrote for three months to 21 Hanover Street and you never wrote me back so I assumed...I assumed you'd moved on, found yourself a nice, sensible husband and gotten married!" There's an anger that you'd never noticed til now, a sense that he'd been hurt to, that he'd felt like you'd abandoned him. So far removed from the debonair, rakish persona he so often displayed.

"21 Hanover Street? You wrote to 21 Hanover Street?"

"Yes, goddamn it!"

"Henry...I lived at 12 Hanover Street."

"What?"

"I lived at number 12, one two, not two one. 12!" It is so absolutely absurd that you can't help but start laugh rather hysterically. That you felt abanonded all these years, angry, resentful, heartbroken and he'd simply gotten the wrong house number, a stupid, ridiculous mistake that had broken your heart into pieces, only to reforge it again.

"You're telling me that for three months I was writing to the wrong address...?" Henry is out of his chair, rounding the table and closing the distance between you so fast that it makes your head spin...or perhaps that is the effect of the emotional journey you're currently experiencing.

"I'm afraid so..."

"Goddamn it...well, shit, honey..." There's a pregnant pause as your eyes scan his profile, the frustrated set of his brow, the clench of his jaw, the familiar bend of his nose. He's not changed, not really. He's older, more lines around his eyes than last you remember, and a few more grey hairs, but then you're older too. Your first grey hairs finally settling in, the soft baby fat of your face having melted away somewhat over the years. But, he's still Henry and you're still the busy Honey Bee he used to chase around the library to the chagrin of the librarian. Things haven't really changed, you realise. With the removal of the one point of hurt between you, you can acknowledge that you still love him without the weight of anger or heartbreak pushing it down.

"Henry?"

"Yeah, sweetheart?"

"Kiss me." It makes you laugh against his mouth how quickly he follows your request, the scrape of his stubble against your skin an old, familiar sensation that you'd all but forgot. It was like coming home, so familiar that it sent a sharp stabbing sense of yearning into your chest even as his arms wrapped around your waist and pulled you to him.

The woodsy smell of his cologne surrounds you, the familiar tweed of his suit jacket scratches your arms, the soft strands of his hair through your fingers, the press of his nose against your cheek. It's like there hasn't been five years since you last kissed, like you hadn't been so angry with him up until five minutes ago that it hurt.

God, and to think, you'd nearly gone your entire life thinking he'd never cared. All because he'd mixed up two simple numbers.

#indiana jones x reader #indiana jones #indiana jones/reader #drabble #reader insert #readerinsert

359 notes · View notes

notesoncrocs · 2 years ago

Text

all of it

thought about the movies everything everywhere all at once and the half of it today until i was sick. eeaao because i was analyzing joy wang's character as a nihilist and the half of it because i'm writing a final paper comparing it to sartre's no exit.

i'm so behind on this class, it's not even funny. it's called literature & existentialism and i picked it because i thought i would like it. i was supposed to like it. then again i was also supposed to take another lit class and consider the major this semester and none of that happened either. when i did wake up in time, i'd go to this class and sit in the back and try to just listen in, and the professor would call on me for nodding off.

but it'll be okay. my discussion post is a month late but i talked about how jobu tupaki searched through all possible universes for a version of a mother who loved and understood her. how she was driven to give up her sense of freedom and agency in the face of these pressures from her mother -- to be straight, college-educated, skinny, more fluent in chinese, less americanized -- and succumb to the conclusion that nothing matters. i have an idea for the thesis for my final paper -- in class we learned about sartre's framework for the concept of "the other" and how profoundly disturbing it is to be in the presence of another person, because as the center of your own universe you are in control of the meaning you choose to give to the world, and when another person is within your universe, your agency is being chipped away. you -- and your meaning -- become chained to the other's judgment of you. and for the half of it i was thinking about different ways people try to take back control of their narrative from the other, whether that's through overexplaining or overexposure of yourself or through physical distance from the other.

there's other things, more important things, about both movies that an existentialist framework could never fully explain away. i thought about evelyn, when facing the possibility of losing her own daughter to the black hole, asking helplessly to her father how he found it in himself to let her go. i thought about the lights from the failing laundromat, the smashed windows, the glass on that dark street, and mother and daughter trying so hard one more time to listen to each other, even though it hurts so much. then i thought about the ending of the half of it, paul munsky running after ellie chu's train, knowing that it's futile and that she's going where he can't follow, but doing it anyway because it was her favorite scene from the movie ek villain and he remembered. he remembered because he loves her. no drawn-out 60-page essay, translated to english from french, laying out a blueprint for how a man should face the burden of his freedom or his death or whatever, could dream of capturing this.

#eeaao #the half of it #emotional support chinese-american queer films #why i don't like lit that much anymore

83 notes · View notes

velvetvexations · 6 months ago

Text

I have several like, specific phrases that play in my head almost like internal reaction videos. Sometimes I don't know the source of them, which is funny. I realized recently that "OHHHH, I HATE IT!" came from American Dad, when Roger is pissed at Klaus for calling college university.

Another is breaking down an argument and stating like, the thesis statement, and saying something like "which I'm not even going to touch because that's obvious bullshit" and going into the finer details. I have no idea where that's from but I know it's from somewhere. Occasionally it blends with Penn from Penn & Teller: Bullshit! saying "even if [x], WHICH IT FUCKING DOESN'T, [return to speaking calmly]".

16 notes · View notes

qqueenofhades · 1 year ago

Note

I'm about halfway through my History BA and I have a question (I pinky promise I'm doing more research than just asking tumblr academics their opinions), but this is also me assuming you did college in both the US and the UK so forgive me if I guessed wrong and am confusing you with someone else. How does graduate school in either country compare? I'm still stuck between whether I want to go for my master's or straight to PhD so obviously I'm quite a ways away from making any important decision, but considering that I'm studying British history (primarily), it felt natural to consider getting my degree(s) abroad. Are there like, any major differences you're aware of that made university vastly different, or are they more similar than I'm thinking?? Was one situation flat out preferable to the other?? If you even have strong opinions about it at all

That is me, yes. BA in the US with one year in the UK; MA in the US; PhD in the UK; now the co-director of a US MA/PhD program, so I have an appreciable amount of experience with graduate and postgraduate education in both countries. Here are the main ways in which they compare/what the experience is like in both:

In the UK overall, the experience is much more self-directed. I only had taught coursework for the first year of the PhD; the rest of it was spent in research and writing. So compared to the American system, where you take 3 years of coursework first (such as the PhD program that I currently manage) and then write the dissertation in the last year or two (hence the designation ABD, or All But Dissertation), you're thrown into the deep end from the start. I didn't have comprehensive exams, which might be a plus if that's something you have anxiety about, but the tradeoff was that I had to complete the dissertation proposal and first full-length sample chapter in the very first year, rather than waiting for year 3, and to have that be the basis on which I was evaluated/approved to continue to the full PhD degree. If you know what you want to work on and have solid supervision, this can work out and it certainly allows you to develop your topic in depth from the start, but if this is the kind of thing that gives you heart palpitations, there is that. The bright side is that you will come out with a thesis that will need less revision to be suitable as a monograph, because you've done a higher and longer amount of work upfront. I.e. I published my PhD thesis as a monograph with a major academic press within a year of graduating, which is generally rare in the US system.

As such, the US PhD experience is overall more directed/structured and leans toward more coursework than research. The research is obviously a big part of it in a way that American undergrads rarely train in (unless they go to a fancy liberal arts writing-intensive school for undergraduate, like I did), but as noted, the dissertation is central in the UK PhD system in a way it isn't (or at least not as much) in the American system. You have pros and cons for both systems, and sometimes I wished that my intensively research-centric PhD, where it was all on me to do the research, write the research, and have something to present to my supervisors on schedule for each meeting, had more taught coursework or formal/structured contact time. You have a committee in the American system, i.e. three or four academics who will oversee your defense, whereas in the UK, at least in a history program, you only have two aside from your degree supervisor: an internal reader (within the institution) and external reader (from outside the institution). While this means fewer people whose approval you need to wrangle, my viva (final defense) ended up being a Goddamn Ordeal because my external reader, despite being a friend of my supervisor, was really not suited to read a dissertation on the subject and I don't think should have been picked for it, then was extremely unprofessional about her notes/reviews/suggestions. (My supervisor likewise apologized to me for that, so yeah, It Was Bad. Academic Trauma Ahoy.)

Master's programs in the UK are also incredibly intense; they are generally one year compared to the usual two years for most US programs, and you have to complete the coursework AND write a thesis in that time, which is not something that I really recommend for maximum sanity. (Then again, if you're getting an advanced degree in history, that might be out the window.) However, if you are working on British history, then yeah, it makes the most sense to be based in a UK university, since the archives that you will need to consult will be, obviously, far easier to access than if you need to try to cram it all into one overseas academic research trip on a postgraduate student's budget. In that case, it might make sense to just apply to a master's/PhD program in the UK upfront, to smooth the transition/amount of moving around/financial misery you will have to endure. However, word to the wise that there WILL be financial misery, especially as an international student at a UK university. The Tories have yet again jacked the visa and NHS application fees (which you will have to pay upfront for every year you intend to be there) through the roof; your tuition will be much higher (though as noted in previous asks, don't go anywhere unless they pay YOU to do it) and it is difficult to get any part-time work outside of teaching or other opportunities directly related to your degree, which are subject to the uh, totally great pay rate for junior academics. (Sarcasm. That was sarcasm.)

Basically, yeah: it depends on what kind of student you are, how much initiative you like to take, how much structure you need or don't need, what sources you anticipate needing to consult and how you're going to do that, if you're comfortable starting the dissertation right away and being ready to present a finished chapter at the end of year 1, and whether you want your graduate/postgraduate experience to focus primarily on independent research or taught courses. There are no exactly right answers to these questions and you will obviously have to think about what suits you best (along, of course, the money aspect). Good luck!

#anonymous #ask #school stuff

23 notes · View notes

we-are-inevitable · 2 years ago

Note

Your ask box is my kingdom, I am taking it over

But anyway I so badly want your thoughts on Jack and Davey in my college prof au please please please I know I haven't spoken about it on tumblr yet except from a little bit but I love your Javid so yeah

-has watched high school musical thank you very much

ok ok @roideny obvi this is your au but here are my Very Important thoughts bc i love them Very Much ugh. in love w them

David Jacobs-Kelly:

44 years old, born in ‘79

Undergrad: majored in English, minored in Creative Writing

Masters: Poetics and Theory AdvC- NYU

Doctorate: English and American Literature, thesis is over gender and sexuality in Shakespeare

he’s been Dr. Jacobs-Kelly for about seventeen years by the time the story takes place!

as a prof, he teaches a comp class, an honors comp (Critical Analysis and Writing), and some creative writing/poetry courses! he’s a very busy man.

he meets Race, Albert, and Finch because they’re students in his comp class!

when he’s not teaching, he’s really involved in the local queer scene. i feel like he’s a staple at drag brunches and pride celebrations; he’s not a huge club fan anymore but he still loves being Involved. growing up during the aids crisis is traumatizing at the least, and im sure he lost a few friends, so he stays up to date in the queer stuff to sort of honor them.

he marries jack in 2011 when gay marriage is legalized in new york!

he’s a huge shakespeare fan, as seen by his phd studies. he has a hamlet-inspired tattoo because he’s gay

tbh he probably has a cat named after shakespeare (they have two cats im calling it now. shakespeare and bryan, name courtesy of jack)

he and jack don’t have any kids, but he’s a loving fun uncle for Les and Sarah’s respective kids!

Jack Jacobs-Kelly:

45 years old, born in ‘78

Undergrad: Studio Art! but he dropped out after a semester <33

he just decided that college wasn’t for him. why pay money for something he doesn’t need?

he goes straight into a set design apprenticeship that medda helps him get! medda is his adoptive mom, so he’s been around queer spaces and theatre since he was around 15. he loves it, it’s his home

that being said he probably sells his own paintings and maybe does mural work on the side, he likes to keep busy and is invested in the art scene, and he meets davey when davey moves to New York for his masters! he’s the reason davey stays in NYC <33

he’s very eccentric, and very much doesn’t give a fuck. he’s a black queer man- the universe already nerfed him, so why worry about anything else? i can see him being the really go-with-the-flow husband to davey’s more tight-strung academic vibe. they really balance each other out

again, they don’t have kids, but i feel like this jack is very much For The Youths? i can see him volunteering a lot, working for organizations that help troubled kids get into the arts— i feel like it’s his passion project that makes him feel better when davey is busy at the university all day. in another life he’s a foster parent, but he and davey just don’t have the lifestyle to foster, so he focuses his energy elsewhere!

whenever davey “adopts” some freshmen he’s always on board. he really hits it off with Albert!

not as involved in the queer scene as davey, but his career is literally in musical theatre set design, so even if he’s not in the queer scene he’s In The Queer Scene

i don’t wanna talk about him losing medda but i can see him eventually inheriting the theater!

he loves his nieces and nephews! he’s a big family guy

Extra Thoughts:

jack and davey are a pair. they rarely go anywhere outside of work without each other, and they’re so, SO in love.

jack pretty regularly comes to see Davey while he’s at work; he’ll bring him lunch to office hours and pop in to watch him lecture from time to time.

davey attends the opening night of every show jack works on <33

their apartment is always a mess LMAO. davey has papers and books everywhere, there’s paint on the floor, brushes all over the place— it’s what happens when you cross a tired academic and an adhd creative. shit happens.

they actually stay pretty hip and on-trend? idk how it happens but jack is rlly good with youth culture and davey is on top of gay culture so like. yeah they work.

over summers and breaks, they travel a lot! not anything crazy expensive— they love international travel, but they’re also a big fan of road trips and rental cars!

they are my FAVORITES and i love them so much

#ugh el ily thank u for letting me contribute #jack kelly #davey jacobs #david jacobs #livesies #newsies musical #newsies #ask a jac !#elliot tag #prof davey au

20 notes · View notes

mariellewritesalot · 1 year ago

Text

It's my 9th anniversary on Tumblr 🥳 (since December 2014)

Almost a decade, wow! Excelsior by mariellewritesalot is a writing blog I started as a teenager to fully embrace the fact that I wanted to become a writer. I wanted my own "website" or at least a home for my words. "Excelsior" is my favorite word, and I was a bit obsessed with it back then, given that it meant going ever upward. "mariellewritesalot" was just something I thought of while watching cartoons where one of the characters had "a lot" attached to their name (I believe it was Sir Yipsalot). I could cringe, but honestly, I'm not too bothered enough to change it. Maybe it's part of its charm.

Suffice it to say, this has been my longest relationship so far, haha. We've had our ups and downs, terrible lulls of writer's block when I would be too busy with life or too paralyzed with fear that I'm not good enough to actually post something here.

I started writing early on because I was the kind of child who read everywhere and owned a Kindle since I was 12. I joined essay contests and wrote fan fiction until I was in the middle of my teenage years. I loved Total Girl Philippines, and eventually became a Jr. TG Staff Writer for one week in the summer of 2012. I won a Palanca when I was in senior high school. I dabbled, of course, in campus journalism for many years. Editor-in-Chief for some publications. I wrote news, features, opinions...even UAAP sports! I then created a Facebook page for my blog to expand my audience. I was fortunate enough to land a spot in UP Diliman where I took a certificate course on Malikhaing Pagsulat sa Filipino (loved working on my Filipino writing skills) and eventually, my Bachelor of Arts degree in Philippine Studies, where I also majored in History. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Filipino food in Filipino-American restaurants based in the United States, guided by my love for Doreen Fernandez essays and curiosities about the diaspora; so I could also help these restaurants map out their histories. During the pandemic, I worked on a practice Young Adult novel called, Don't Write Me Off.

I started working freelance and interning for some publications like PhilStar Life and Esquire Philippines. I've been a part of college organizations in UP Diliman, where I honed my skills in leadership, writing, and research so that I may be able to do talks and workshops about writing in different schools and provinces in the Philippines. Last year, I became a Creative Nonfiction fellow for the 61st Silliman University National Writers Workshop, which has been a dream of mine since, well, I was in high school and deeply obsessed with 'the scene.' I got to belong with my chosen family in the fellows with whom I shared the once-in-a-lifetime experience in Dumaguete. We have since joined the Cebu Art Fair last year with our zine, Saudade: A Study on Longing, which features two of my works. As a collective, we're always collaborating on something. Watch this space!

Nowadays, I'm living somewhere in Spain, and I'm working on my first book. It's a collection. It's (too) vulnerable. I think you'll like it. I believe that I will probably be in pursuit of more knowledge and skills as a writer for the rest of my life, so despite my wanting to be a mysterious private person, I think you'll be hearing (reading?) a lot from me on various platforms. Hopefully.

While we're here, I have something new. Since we're losing Tinyletter next month, which was where I used to send out my newsletter of truly vulnerable, exclusive pieces, I have decided to "move houses" and finally join Substack. I'm going to talk about some facets of my life here in Spain, food, and the usual prose. Essentially, a lot of my stuff will be free to read there, but I would appreciate pledges if you can. I will still update my Tumblr from time to time, of course, seeing as this is my main site. No worries!

This year, I'm also going to work on creating an Instagram account for my writing. I have beautiful plans I can't wait to share with you. I'm hoping you'll come along for the ride.

Thank you, lovers, for this milestone.

Always,

Marielle

#9 year tumblrversary #tumblr milestone #mariellewritesalot #marielle fatima tuazon

2 notes · View notes

saamnangg · 4 months ago

Text

Week 1: Motivations

Firstly, I decided to pursue an MFA degree knowing that it is a terminal degree and that I can use it to teach at a university/college whenever I would like to. It may be contrary to popular opinion that you need a PhD nowadays to teach, but I am firm in the belief that the MFA will be enough for what I want to do. Plus, I believed that the MFA would give me enough experience and projects to be confident about entering the workforce as a designer.

I do not want to be only known as a designer that has no relevant project experience and is instead only seen for my bachelor’s in Computer Science. I want to be seen as a designer first, and then as a communicative middleman between design and computer science. I do not want to be seen as someone who can integrate coding into the design projects I decide to work on. I do not like coding. If people want someone who can code, they should find someone who is willing and passionate about coding and design together.

I have always liked the idea of community, neighborhoods, and learning about local events, campaigns, stores, etc. Having been originally located in Rhode Island and then moved to Boston after being a visitor for years opened my eyes to the two different, yet also similar vibrant cultures that each state has. Especially in Boston, I have taken a liking to neighborhoods such as Somerville and Cambridge. The aforementioned cities wholeheartedly embrace community building and promotion of local businesses, artists, etc.

For example, some projects and collectives I have seen that work towards improving and creating social spaces for people are: CultureHouse and Kendall Common.

CultureHouse is an organization in Somerville that transforms unused real estate into social spaces to be used by all or even to support others that wish to create community events/spaces. I have definitely stepped into their coworking space once or twice before and it was quite frankly awesome to be able to just go into a place and work completely for free and be surrounded by others.

Kendall Square has a pop-up roller skating event in Kendall Common called Rollerama. Rollerama is entirely free from not requiring a payment to enter into the space, and roller skate rentals are also free (but with an optional donation). Rollerama was such a fun and vibrant way to bring people together, engage them in a new skill/hobby, all while being entirely free and accessible to people, including myself! I’ve been to Rollerama a couple times now and it’s still so fun every time.

I really enjoy going to spaces and experiencing the environments for myself first without any preconceptions or judgments from other people. Conducting that ‘research’ myself helps in deciding whether or not such events are something I would be passionate about working on or furthering my research in.

Overall, I hope to improve my physical fabrication skills so I can make sets or prototypes that can be used by people in an effort to codesign. I really enjoy working with physical environments and tangible articles so in turn I hope to be able to create things to go even further with my interest in the physical. In the future, I’m hoping to work on projects that have to do with program building and/or with communities and local neighborhoods. If not that, I would like to work for or with a company that focuses on interaction design, service design, or just some kind of engagement with people that is not strictly focused on the digital experience.

My main topic as of now that I chose to focus on for a thesis are third places. Third places are a term defined by Ray Oldenburg, an American sociologist. “…The places outside of the home (the first place) and the workplace (the second place) where people go to converse with others and connect with their community.”

Some ideas that I have for a thesis topic include the following:

Ways to create or implement barrier-free third places

Accessible with public transportation

Low-cost modality or free

Pop-up third places that can eventually be turned into permanent places

Ease of implementation

Usage of buildings from realtors/landlords that otherwise have empty and unused real estate

Low-stakes, low commitment to entering and engaging with spaces

Both of these topic ideas are related to community, socializing, public spaces, connection, loneliness, relational autonomy, and urban environments. I have always had hopes that my thesis work would be something focusing on people and the physical environment or communities around them.

0 notes

iwantjobs · 5 months ago

Text

9/2/2024: Semi-homeless is returning to school to get her master in cosmology philosophy or the female Buddha philosophy or hardcore heterosexual female philosophy with any unknown colleges willing to offer her a online program. The the semi-homeless can't get a job with the city to reduce homeless problem, corporations, and the semi-homeless will try academia door. Trang's thinking at 51.38 years old after waking up excitedly listen to videos on the cosmos.

-------

Morning:

I am Interested in an online masters program for my philosophies as a self-proclaimed the Female Buddha who is currently semi-homeless and who will be living in Vietnamese ghetto in San Jose where lots of little Vietnamese Buddhist temples are located. Please forward my email to the Dean.

I graduated from SJSU in 1996 in advertising with a minor in marketing--all part of brainwashing disciplines. I have a social studies highschool teaching credential from SFSU in 2004--part of brain washing discipline. I am an American citizen who came to America as a Vietnamese refugee, but I plan to relinquish my genocide-gay-Spanish-as-2nd-language American citizenship to protest as the female Buddha to return to Vietnam if it's not too gay or Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, and Iran.

If this university is not interested in your returning student and not willing to offer a 100% online program for me as a disabled who has some mental illness then I will go to those obscured online universities.

Thank you,

Mai-Trang Thi Nguyen

P.S. sorry for the bad English for I am semi-homeless, disabled, and a mental so I don't have much time to proof read my work unless it's my thesis.

----

Morning:

This opportunity is great for Oregon State for Oregon has yet to claim its fame located in between Washington State and California.

Thank you,

Mai-Trang Thi Nguyen

P.S. Sorry for the bad English for I am semi-homeless, disabled, and a mental so I don't have much time to proof read my work unless it's my thesis. Yahoo Mail: Search, Organize, Conquer

Yahoo Mail: Search, Organize, Conquer

0 notes

umichenginabroad · 7 months ago

Text

Week 5: Master Chef Edition

Thank you for joining us for another episode of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives! This is your host Emily (aka Guy Fieri) and today we'll be taking a look at the Universidad of Navarra-Tecnun Txoko! After having been more than a month away from home, a lot of us had been missing some good ol' home cooked meals. We asked our advisors here if we could use the Txoko, which is basically a shared kitchen space used for making meals as a group and are super popular in the Basque country. They agreed, gave us a budget, and then told us that we would be chefin' it up for a group of 18 people. Now, all of us are college kids who can cook but it's not like we're making 5-star meals on the daily. Normally I'm just happy if I have the time in-between classes to whip up my maruchan ramen with some self-made broth and an egg for something really gourmet. We ended up deciding that we would give our advisors and professors a classic american meal that included: mac and cheese, seared steaks with a red wine sauce (shoutout to Mateo because I would've paid actual money for that steak in a restaurant), roasted brussel sprouts, banana bread, and some shirley temples. Below is a pic of the menu that I designed for the occasion (and of course had to make it u of m themed):

And here's all of us after the dinner (and after some minor technical difficulties with the banana bread - Deidra and Jayashree were both troopers for making it through that little fiasco)

In the end we all had a fun time cooking! It was really enjoyable to work together and make a meal that we could be proud of. Everyone liked the dishes and were super impressed with how it turned out (tbh we also lowered our own expectations in case things went wrong lol). On that note, Izzy and I accidentally made waaaay too much mac and cheese because we overestimated our measurements and how much we would need. woops! Made for some good leftovers for a few days though. Here's us scooping literal heaps of pasta into the pan:

The rest of the week was pretty much filled with the usual, going to work for our research and doing some stuff outside of that like watching Inside Out 2. We got to learn about electrospinning and see some demonstrations by one of our professor's students, which I found super interesting since it's all about making actual nanofibers for muscle. That same student was doing her thesis presentation and we were invited to attend so that was cool! She had already explained some of her work to us during the electrospinning demo but went more in depth about it. The entire thing was also in spanish too so I got in a lot of listening practice and learned some new medical/science terminology. Our university has some Fridays blocked off to give us long weekends in order to explore other cities or countries, so we took that opportunity to go to...Barcelona!

Barcelona! Inspired by the Ed Sheeran song?

Thursday night we hopped on the bus to take a straight shot route to the city. I'm not a big fan of sleeping on buses, but luckily it was late at night so I dozed off for a little bit. My uncle's a big time traveler, so he was able to hook us up with a really really nice hotel right on Barceloneta Beach. It's called the W Barcelona, and really was a W for us with everything it offered, including an amazing view of all the city's biggest landmarks.

During the day, we visited a bunch of the highlights - one of the main focuses being the famous Sagrada Familia. It really is one of those things where you're astounded by the scale and intensity of it in person. The years of hard work and dedication spent on all the precise details can be clearly seen. Along the way, we also saw the spanish version of the Arc de Triomf, and later on trekked our way to Park Güell. This place is definitely worth seeing if you're going to Barcelona, since it offers an overlook of the whole city and is filled with mosaic structures from the praised architect Antoni Gaudí. By this point I have to admit I was kinda dying. It was exhaustingly hot outside and combined with not sleeping very well on the bus, it's safe to say that I was 0-1 against the sun. After a long night's rest, Saturday was pretty chill. We took a stroll down Las Ramblas and through the Gothic Quarter, saw some more of Gaudí's buildings, popped by the fanciest Zara I've ever witnessed, visited the oldest candle store in the city, and had some fireeee juice at La Boquería. I really liked the market stands there and all the food looked super delish. I probably should've brought water with me into the city but didn't so that mango coconut juice was my saving grace for real. We ended the night with getting some food from a place that really reminded me of sweetgreen and watched Top Gun: Maverick. For only having two full days in a city as big as Barcelona, we accomplished seeing a lot! This begs the question, was Ed right?

I think, see for yourself!

I ALMOST forgot! We visited a store dedicated to a Catalan legend that used defecation as a way to fertilize the land. So, the store featured...just that! You really can't find a place anywhere like that one.

Nosotros, viva la vida

Siempre vida, Barcelona

Emily Dobao

IPE San Sebastian, Spain

June 24th, 2024

#UmichEnginAbroad #IPETecnun #EmilyDobao #Spain #IPESummer24

0 notes

pointofreturn · 1 year ago

Text

professor's pet, pt. 1

I was always a model student. Always the teacher’s pet.

Intelligence was my earliest form of worthiness. People told me over and over how smart and well-spoken I was. In second grade, I was placed in a third-grade reading class. Gifted for fourth grade. I read books instead of playing with the other kids and spent middle school lunches with my nose between Edgar Allan Poe poems or Faulkner short stories. I aced every advanced English class, received praise for even the shittiest papers, and received perfect scores on state writing tests. I completed both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English with a focus on American Literature. I was accepted and offered full funding to two prestigious Ph.D. programs at famous southern schools. And I would have finished my doctorate if not for this dreaded tale I’m about to tell you.

Naturally, as a reader, I am also a writer. Mother saved all of the stories I wrote through grade school. I won an award in fourth grade for a story about a purple hairbrush. I wrote and illustrated a children’s book about squirrels with family conflict. All of the creative stories have one thing in common—they are infused with bits and pieces of my life.

I’ve always been one to speak from experience.

Writing was always something I enjoyed and I was objectively good at it, but my internal doubt ruined my ability to properly see my potential.

His name surrounds me months before I ever see him. He’s one of the more popular professors, and I’d come to learn that was for good reason. I started taking classes at Another University because I was determined to finally finish my bachelor’s. I started talking to people about the research I was interested in, what I liked to read and write.

“You have to meet him,” they say.

“You two will really get along. You’re so similar!”

“Have you talked to ______? He might be interested in picking your brain.”

I’m accepted to the honors program where I’m tasked with writing my first thesis. I settle on a comparative study on F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s tandem novels, This Side of Paradise and Save Me the Waltz, arguing that Scott’s patriarchal plagiarism and creative control directly contributed to Zelda’s mental and physical disabilities. It wasn’t profound, but Zelda’s novel is my favorite book ever, so I had to write about it. All my professors and peers tell me I should get his input on my work.

How I sometimes wish we hadn’t been pushed to cross paths.

How I sometimes wish I’d never met him.

After I decided to save myself, I finished inpatient treatment and figured the best way forward was to go back to college. I’d gathered a handful of credits from the two schools I’d been to previously and even though my heart was originally called by a music or art major, my head determined that I should be practical. English, I thought, was a path that could lead me to an attainable career in teaching or editing but would still allow me to engage with my creativity.

And given that it was my best subject, it made sense.

Several of my English professors had a profound impact on my life. My first creative writing teacher was at the local community college I said I’d never go to but have my associate’s degree from. He was in his early forties and kind of looked like Jason Bateman if you squinted the right way. His class was nonfiction-focused, so we spent a lot of time writing about ourselves. Easy enough. During our final meeting, he told me I should keep writing about my life. I’d had other people tell me to write a book, but he was the first to suggest writing a memoir, the first to suggest that my chaotic life was worth talking about.

I had an English professor in Tampa who assigned the book that taught me the truth about chattel slavery and the Native American genocide. He looked like a mix of Albert Einstein and Eugene Levy, always smelled like stale cigarettes and coffee, and was a notoriously hard grader. He was the first to give me a C on a paper, but he let me revise it and pushed me to be a better academic writer. Later, he awarded me a coveted A- on a paper about southern high schools teaching intentional misinformation on the Civil War and slavery. His only criticism was that I was too emotional, that I brought too much of myself into the subject.

After another health incident, I had to move back home, once again, but I was impatient to finally finish my bachelor’s degree. It had been nearly five years since I graduated high school and I was starting to feel behind in more ways than one. I transferred to Another University.

I grew up going to classes with Mother at AU. Another school I swore I would never go to and now have two degrees from. I distinctly remember a class she brought me to when I was four or five years old. We did a taste test—bitter, salty, sweet, sour. Each flavor was on a toothpick and we had to place the wood on a different section of our tongue to see where we got the strongest reaction. I have no idea what it was supposed to prove. But I loved the classroom, I loved watching the professor, I loved the feeling of belonging with the other students.

Another University birthed and destroyed my academic life.

I sit in an office with Josephine, my honors seminar professor. She is youthful and beautiful, blonde with a full, bright smile and spring-water eyes. Josephine will come to be one of my favorites over the years, one who sticks with me through my master’s thesis.

We’re waiting for her to introduce me to him.

“I think your project has a lot of potential,” she affirms. “I’m really excited to hear what he has to say. You have aligned research interests and I’m sure he’ll have some source recommendations for you to take this further.”

I smile and nod. I’m always nervous about meeting new people, but he responded politely enough to my email asking for a meeting. I was just getting in my head.

Josephine shuffles some papers around on her desk to break up the awkwardness. A figure passes outside her door.

“Oh! Dr. ______!”

I turn around to catch a glimpse of feathery blonde hair and the tail of a tweed coat. His body backtracks a few steps and stands in the doorway.

The world goes quiet.

Who are you? Did I know you from somewhere before?

I now completely understand his popularity. His looks alone are enough to tempt any of the academically needy English girls. Who wouldn’t want to sit alone in his office, listening intently to anything and everything he has to say about what you’ve written, all while secretly hoping for a hint that he’s interested in more than just your paper. His charming personality and hospitable mannerisms were just the cherry on top of a seemingly perfect package.

Josephine speaks again, beaming between the two of us stopped in time. “This is Mollie Steven, the undergraduate honors student you’re meeting with this afternoon.”

He opens his mouth and honey whiskey comes out.

“Mollie.”

He says my name and I don’t know if I’ll hear anything in the world ever again.

He leads me to his office and we sit down to have a conversation about my thesis. I can’t remember a single detail of the conversation but I will always remember the way he looked at me. I’ll always remember the way he shifted uncomfortably in his desk chair, obviously nervous. Despite the gossip I hear about his effortless confidence and charm, able to flirt with a light pole and all that, he stutters over his words and lets me lead the conversation. I think he asks a few questions about my personal life—where I’m from and went to school, normal things like that.

I knew immediately that there was a mutual attraction between us. And what was worse, some kind of instant, magnetic connection. Sticking your finger in a light socket and all that. I was still dating Seb, but this was the first man I’d felt something for in years. He felt something for me too, however fleeting or insignificant.

Our “story” spans over six years. It doesn’t have a happy ending, but why would I have ever expected it to?

#creative nonfiction #creative writing #memoir #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writing #academia #graduate school

1 note · View note

sbgridconsortium · 1 year ago

Text

Structure of Equity - Jamaine Davis - Meharry Medical College

Sharing some of our #SBGrid member tales from the last year. This one from September 2022.

Numbers speak clearly to Jamaine Davis. As a boy growing up on Long Island, math came so easy to him that one of his family nicknames was "the professor."

Other numbers have shaped his ambitions at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, where Davis runs one of the few labs in the world that uses structural biology to help explain biological health disparities.

For example, U.S. Black adults are twice as likely to have Alzheimer's disease compared to non-Hispanic Whites. And despite a somewhat lower overall lifetime risk of breast cancer, Black women experience a 40% higher death rate from breast cancer than White women at every age and are more likely to be diagnosed with fast growing and late-stage breast cancer.

"My research program is basically at the intersection of structural biology, genetics and disease, and health disparities," says Davis of the big-picture questions that guide his lab's work. "What are the molecular mechanisms that dictate who develops diseases like cancer or Alzheimer's? And then how do we design effective therapies? How do we target the right pathways for the right treatment for that patient?"

One project in the early stages focuses on a gene (ABACA7) that has a stronger effect on risk of Alzheimer's disease in Blacks than the better known ApoE4 gene risk variant. "It's actually the strongest risk factor for developing Alzheimer's in African Americans known so far," Davis says.

As he explains it, ABACA7 transports lipids out of cells, handing off the lipids directly to ApoE, and also interacts with Tau, another protein that goes awry in Alzheimer's. Two missense variants in ABACA7 confer the risk.

"So we've been studying these mutations to see what impact they have on lipid transport," Davis says. "Once we're done, we can look at the people who particularly carry this mutation or variant, see what downstream processes are altered, and design therapies to rescue that. And these variants so far have only been identified in African Americans."

In individuals with African ancestry, the phospholipid-transporting ATPase ABCA7 (ABCA7) gene has stronger associations with Alzheimer’s disease risk than in individuals with European ancestry and than the apolipoprotein E (APOE) ɛ4 allele. The Davis lab is exploring the structure and function of key ABACA7 mutations and how they contribute to alterations in transporting lipids, which may influence Alzheimer’s in African Americans. Credit: Courtesy of J.Davis.

Davis began his academic training on a different career path. With his early affinity for math and science, he reasoned that chemical engineering made sense as a college major. But near graduation at Drexel University, he realized that the typical next step for someone with a chemical engineering degree was a job at an oil company. He hadn't taken one biology course in college, but he found himself drawn to biomedical research instead.

He seized an opportunity to work in a biophysics lab at a neighboring school, University of Pennsylvania, where his mentor Jacqueline Tanaka gave him a peek at the scientific career he could have in biophysics and opened his eyes to the kind of academic role model he could be. Her excitement for X-ray crystallography and for increasing the proportion of women and minorities in science inspired him to go to graduate school.

"She built her career in structural biology and mentoring, hand in hand," Davis says. "She saw some potential in me, and I was at a crossroads." Davis had also been unaware of the extent of health inequities across the country and of the low representation of minorities in academia.

For his thesis, Davis chose the lab of Harvey Rubin, a dynamic speaker who fostered an immediate interest in infectious disease. In Rubin's lab, Davis characterized an enzyme that enables Mycobacterium tuberculosis to enter (and possibly exit) the dormancy stage in the lungs of people.

When Davis finished his PhD in 2007, he was the first Black to earn a doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biophysics at UPenn. "I had a great time," he says. "They were very supportive. But it is pretty shocking. If you look at Twitter, there are other people posting the same kind of statistic. They're the first Black to graduate from a certain program at a certain institution. It does show there is still some under-representation across different departments."

He followed up with two postdoctoral fellowships at the National Cancer Institute. He first showed that a novel protein in Shigella (bacteria that cause food poisoning) was not a protease, as some suspected. A second project elucidated the binding modes of a protein with multiple domain repeats implicated in the development of cancer.

Then he thought about how best to combine his interests in a distinctive research program. He chose Meharry, one of the oldest and largest historically black U.S. academic health centers. (Davis is also a member of the Vanderbilt University Center for Structural Biology.)

Historically black colleges and universities are powerhouses in educating African Americans who go on to earn doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine, as Davis and his co-authors reviewed in a commentary (Cell, 2022). Blacks make up 12% of the U.S. workforce, but only 5% of working physicians and 3.6% of full-time faculty conducting research at medical schools.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Davis found new opportunities for mentorship and community outreach. Soon after the pandemic took hold, a student-driven community formed on Twitter with the handle @BlackInBiophys and a logo designed by Taneisha Gillyard, a former postdoc in the Davis lab. Davis spoke at a virtual meeting held by the group.

A former postdoc in the Davis lab, Taneisha Gillyard, designed the logo for @BlackInBiophys, a student-driven community that formed on Twitter during the pandemic. Credit: Taneisha Gillyard.

In a short time, a strong sense of community developed among people who may have never met in person, but know a lot more about each other through social media, Davis says. People share grant writing tips, training and job opportunities, and generally celebrate the scientists, their contributions, and career options for the next generation.

The visibility may help change other statistics about Black researchers receiving less NIH funding and being cited less often than their white colleagues, Davis says.

Davis also teamed up with Meharry colleague Jennifer Cunningham-Erves to develop a funded community outreach project to address community concerns about vaccines. He has spoken about the basic science of mRNA at townhall-style community meetings, in person and virtual. The online recordings have reached people from Chicago to New York to Haiti.

The project collaborates with a consortium of more than 90 churches in middle Tennessee and Better Options TN, a community nonprofit organization. To understand concerns, the Meharry team interviewed people in the Southern United States. They developed and organized content on a frequently updated web site, https://yourcovidvaxfacts.com/en.

"We asked about their thoughts about the vaccine and the virus," Davis says. "The biggest one, particularly for Black Americans, was the distrust with government and healthcare. But I was very impressed with some of the questions that the public had. They weren't getting answers, and they wanted answers. If you remember, one of the major issues with people not getting a vaccine was that they thought it would affect their DNA. They just weren't familiar with mRNA."

Davis felt their concerns and trust issues as well. He initially was cautious about being vaccinated himself, waiting to see more data about its safety in people. "Even being a scientist, I was hesitant," he says. "I didn't want to be one of the first," he says. But as he explained the science and helped alleviate concerns of others, he also convinced himself to get the vaccine too.

Meanwhile, back in the lab after the pandemic disruptions, Davis and his team are working to improve health outcomes for populations most at risk, one variant protein and pathway at a time.

- Carol Cruzon Morton

#sbgrid #structural biology #cryo em #health disparities

0 notes

spacerockfloater · 6 months ago

Text

Hey dearest, I’m actually kinda surprised that you made it all the way to preparing your thesis judging by your reading comprehension skills, since, you know, I was clearly implying that your obsessive self spent a whole week meticulously crafting that reblog which is high-key obsessive, not that you took a lot of time to give me a reply.

And what’s even crazier is that nowhere in that poorly written essay of yours was Rhaenyra’s horrible treatment of other women mentioned, despite it being the key point of my original argument, but instead you opted for redirecting the conversation to “Well, other people also treated Jeyne poorly”! News flash, the men who wanted her title were not her allies. Rhaenyra treating Jeyne like dogshit is morally worse considering she’s backstabbing her. So show!Jeyne getting pissed at her is 100% an acceptable reaction, just as the Rosby girl who refused to offer Rhaenyra sanctuary in F&B was also absolutely in the right.

And please. You have a life? Is that why you have been going back and forth with other people in my comments for, what, 7 days now? Who are you trying to fool with this pitiful ‘holier than thou’ attitude? Sit down. The little collection of other people’s works you’re putting together at the third rate university you paid to be a part of does not concern me in the slightest. I always have to laugh when Americans (apologies if you’re not American, but I’m assuming based on the context of our communication that you are) of all people try to show off their supposed superiority by playing the education card. Good grief! I am currently finishing my Master’s in Clinical Linguistics at a European University where I was selected to be a student along with 19 other linguists among 2.000 applicants. My dissertation is a thorough research on how Alzheimer's disease damages the brain’s Broca area. Unless your thesis is a historical + sociological comparison between the Targaryen Conquest and the European colonization of North America or literally any other continent for that matter, then we’re both just two people arguing about a show with dragons here. Therefore, allow me to thank you for the book recommendations regardless of their relevance to our discussion but please, for the love of God, refrain from including most of these in your paper’s bibliography because 3/4 of the researches on your list were published 50 to 20 years ago, which again may be acceptable for leisure reading and American College projects, but where I’m from, my professors would rip me a new one if I cited a source older than 10 years in my work!

That being said, I can’t believe that I have to point this out, but need I remind you that sometimes the outcome of an author’s work may be different from what they originally intended? Do I have to bring up the movie “Buffalo ‘66”? I mean lol, you yourself stated that Martin’s admitted limitations and bias do not allow him to portray indigenous cultures sufficiently in his work. He may not have intended for the Targs or the Valyrians in general to be a commentary on white supremacy, but that’s what it is. They are white people, racist towards people of colour and they believe that their genetic differences make them superior and give them a divine right to conquer the world, coming from a more “advanced” civilization to “better” the lives of their new subjects. They may not be the only parallel to white supremacy, but they are by far the strongest one.

OP, I truly don’t think that you are a bad person and even if you were, I couldn’t say because I do not know you irl. I believe you’re just a kid that really likes the snow white magical folks and their dragons but trust me, you really do not need to rush to the defence of the creatures that are considered to be “closer to gods than men”. They’ll be fine and Martin’s pockets will not suffer from some criticism. All I’m saying is that purposely denying that the Targs/Valyrians mirror the European Colonisers, makes you seem uneducated at best and kinda racist at worst. Do with that information what you will.

I will not be replying any further as we’re clearly not going to find any common ground. You’re free to say whatever you want about me. Frankly, I do not care. Wish you all the best!

P.S. The Blacks won? After Rhaenyra was killed and her descendants refused to acknowledge her as Queen, drawing their claim to the Iron Throne from being Aegon’s only living heirs, not from being Nyra’s blood? Sure!

Book Jeyne Arryn, fresh from the latest attempt by male relatives to usurp her: "She remains our rightful queen, and mine own blood besides, an Arryn on her mother's side. In this world of men, we women must band together. The Vale and its knights shall stand with her".

Show Jeyne Arryn: I don't have time to consider familial ties, solidarity from shared experiences or the wider ramifications for female succession, where the fuck is my dragon?

Rhaena: Should have read the fine print bitch.

Tyraxes: I was bigger in the book 🙁

449 notes · View notes

generallybrontidefeelings · 4 years ago

Text

Stressed

Rating: NC-17

A/N: Brought to you by this post. I'm tired and sleepy and don't want to make any decisions. The degree is an actual MS you can get from American University in DC. U of Tennessee’s anthropology dept. hosts what’s called a body farm. It's a lab for forensic pathology students. Do NOT I repeat DO NOT look up pictures.

Pairing: Marcus Pike x reader, Marcus Pike x you

Summary: Marcus Pike is an associate faculty member at your forensics college. You ask him to be your second reader for your thesis, even though you have a huge crush on him. Nothing is better than something, right? By the time you pass your exam, you're so pent up you could scream.

Warnings: cadaver talk, pining, age difference, some power dynamics?, annoying college talk, sex, dirty talk, a God awful metaphor curtesy of Blanche Devereaux, 39

“Take a deep breath.”

You huff in a small shallow breath. Then let it out, and take in a longer, fuller one.

“Now let it out.” You let your cheeks puff up as cool air streams past your lips. “You’ve made huge improvements, and you’ve studied hard. The paper exam will be easy, and the oral will be a cinch.”

You gulp. “I know. It’s just...pre-show jitters, you know?”

He gives you a full smile, and flips the document shut. You hand him the binder clip, accidentally brushing his fingers when you do.

"Anything else I can do for you?"

You swallow, fiddling with your paper edge. God you feel like a twelve year old. You're fucking twenty-seven and about to apply for the FBI, why are you such a sap? He’s not available. Not even remotely. He will be gone in a year, back to the Bureau. There is no reason to nurse a crush. And you curse yourself for asking a man you’re attracted to - you, idiot, idiot! - to spend more time with you. Even if it is reading your dull chapter.

"No, I have everything I need, thanks."

"Then scoot. I have to read like...thirty pages of Tanner's chapter before he gets here."

You pull your bag to your shoulder. "you're not going to get that far," you scoff. The tensing in your shoulders relaxes a little when you stand to leave.

"We'll see," he says. He opens the door of his office for you. You glance back once more, and he's still in the doorway watching you go. "See you tomorrow."

"See you." Your mind swirls back and forth between thoughts of Mr. Pike, your thesis, Pike, your oral defence, your paper exam in two days, Marcus crossing his ankles in his reading chair. And you walk. Straight ahead, not looking back. But when you get to the door handle you turn around. And he's still there. Watching.

You've never been so stressed in your life.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

You met Marcus Pike on a muggy afternoon in August deep in the heart of Tennessee. The air warped off the pavement as you drove together to the School of Anthropology to visit your cadaver lying relaxed and prostrate in the middle of a fenced field. The air is already warm, then lightning flashes in the clouds to your right, and plopping rain drops scatter across the lawn, and dampens A-0017’s second hand suit. His raisinette hands lie against the grass almost like he’s communing with the earth. You watched the water hit his face, and permanently closed eyelids, and shaved head.

You had no business being so fidgety while kneeling next to a cadaver. Agent Marcus Pike and the facility director chat a couple feet away, leaving you to your business with A-0017. Pike had never been to the school’s mysterious forensics lab, even though he had plenty of time to when he was earning his own masters. That’s what he said in his email to you three weeks earlier. He’d heard a first-year student was running a fibrous material experiment and asked to tag along. And you said yes. Why not? He was faculty. It wasn’t unheard of. His email was so polite too, letting you know if you weren’t comfortable he understood. Pike. The name rattled a memory somewhere. So you emailed him back, and the next morning he sent you his itinerary: he would meet you in Tennessee. He’d even pay for the rental car.

You sent your advisor a quick text to ask if he was ‘crazy.’ She’d sent back the laughing emoji. No, she said, Marcus Pike isn’t a crazy. You’ll like him.

You did like him. He was waiting for you at the Hertz desk, and heat licked up your skin when you realized - he was striking. He was the type of man you’d make eyes at in a bar without any hope of even getting a number. His brown hair was neatly trimmed, and he had a softness brought on by a light scruff that didn’t hide his dimples. You barely registered that he was apologizing for not getting to introduce himself before flying out, but promised he was who he said he was. Even pulled out his credentials.

“Bureau?” you said to his badge. “I thought you were an associate professor?” You want to smack yourself.

Oh, “I am,” he replied. He dug in his wallet and pulled out a campus ID that matched yours. “I’m taking an interim year. I thought teaching would be a nice way to ease into DC life.”

Now he was here, sweating under the storm clouds while watching you unbutton A-0017’s shirt, and half listening to the director tell him all about how they kept the lawn looking green despite, ahem, fluids. You sternly told A-0017 to be on their best behavior while you pulled their shirt back to examine some fiber swatches stapled to his rubbery chest.

On the flight back Pike asked you all about your thesis plans. You stuttered as you began. He waited, patient. You were writing on how the FBI could contribute to cultural repatriation efforts internationally by returning art pieces. Do you know what it could do to boost scholarly opportunities? The doors it could open! Why put it in cold storage when it could revitalize movements? Art breathes, after all. You were exhausted by the time the plane landed. Both from answering questions, and from keeping a steadily building tension under wraps. You hoped he didn’t notice how you crossed your legs.

“I’d love to read it.” He handed your backpack down from the overhead bin.

“Maybe you should be my second reader.” You got serious when his face perked up. “I still need one.”

---------------------------------------------------------------------

That was nine months ago.

Your exams are in a week, and instead of thinking about preparing, all you can think of is that once everything is turned in, you probably won’t see Marcus again. He’s been your anchor these last months, and you’ve gotten used to his solid presence and encouraging platitudes. You cup your hot cheeks because it’s a dirty thought.

He lets you work in his office for a couple hours a week every week. The crammed little space is tight quarters, but he makes room for your laptop anyway. Sometimes you worked together heads bent for full time. Sometimes he read pages from your thesis, and you help him grade some papers from his first-year art history course. And sometimes you drink three pm coffee together and don’t work at all. It’s your favorite time of the week. The glow his praise gives you is embarrassing. And he’s an easy companion - nope, colleague. Your heart beats and your mouth waters every time you’re fifteen feet from his office door. The cold door knob jolts you took. You harbor a secret. Keep it warm in your belly. It swirls hungrily deep in you.

But now it’s a problem. You’re so distracted. Every time you leave his office, you’re tense from want. Your body is already over-caffeinated and achy from sitting in hard library chairs so long. But you keep going. Every time an anxious heat lights up the alarms in your head your instinct is to ask him what to do. You have to rest your hands in your head and remind yourself: he isn’t your babysitter, he’s a grown man who doesn’t have boundless time to tell you what to do. You have to figure it out yourself. Even if you really just want him to tell you what this or that section needs, is the title here misleading, is it lunch time, do you think the tone here is condescending?

What do you think? What do you want it to look like?

You think you want to grab his dumb button down collars and bite his lip. You want it to look flushed and tousled and desperate. You want to ride him in his reading chair with the door locked. It just isn’t fair.

The night before your first exam you take z-quil, drink lavender tea, and read a chapter of your favorite book to relax. Your phone buzzes at nine. It’s Marcus: good luck! You’re going to do great! Well. Better take some more Z-quill now that your heart is palpitating.

You pass both tests in excellent standing - MS in International Relations: complete. Pike attends the oral exam. Your skin goes hot when he smiles at you when the committee declares you exceed expectations. He invites you for a celebratory drink in the next couple days, which means you have two days to sternly wrangle your crush back into the dirty corner she came from.

You fail miserably.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

“Look,” he says, setting his beer down on the glass bar counter. “I know it’s not my business, but you still look stressed out. Are your grades bothering you?”

The rim of your gin and tonic is wet with condensation from where your finger circles it. “No, they’re great.”

He bumps your shoulder with his. “Then what’s the damage? You’re jumpier than a…” he trails off thinking a good metaphor. He squints at you a little.

“A virgin at a prison rodeo?” you supply. He inhales sharply, eyes wide. “You can laugh.”

“I didn’t know you watched ‘The Golden Girls,” he says. His tone is admiring. “I was going to say jumpier than a graduate student giving their defense.” You purse your lips when he raises his eyebrows at you. “Can I help at all?”

You watch his Adam’s apple bob when he takes another sip of his beer. The soft orange lights in the bar spill around his jaw and throat, they flicker in his irises. His face in three quarter profile is august. You’re utterly exhausted from the polite ‘student mentor’ dance you’ve had to do for months while keeping your desire at bay. And more than that, you didn’t want to answer. You wanted to show him and let him decide. The sultry washboard and piano music give you that last boost.

You make sure he’s watching you, then you slowly reach out and wrap your fingers around his wrist.

Then you wait.

Marcus pauses from lifting his beer bottle, eyes glued to your hand on his wrist. It’s petite against him. He stares at your baby blue fingernails pairing beautifully with his Stirling watch - and he feels himself harden.

All the skin on your body stands at attention when he meets your eyes. Everything in them tells you he wants you just as bad. There’s a hesitant curve above his eyebrow though. You get it. You were his student - he’s such a sweet man he wouldn’t even dream of using a power dynamic like that to get laid. Your breath comes in short heaves.

“The semester ended thirty-six minutes ago,” you say over the music. He takes a deep breath. You aren’t his student anymore. Not according to the school, anyway.

You want him to decide. If he doesn’t, you’ll go home and fall apart under your fingertips thinking about how hot it would have been to lift your dress and sit on his cock while wearing your thigh highs.

“Do you want to leave?” You nod, resisting the urge to bite your lip.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Marcus’s apartment is homey. Streetlights flood the floor of the living room through the street facing windows. You turn this way and that to inspect the dark areas that look like bookshelves while he hangs up your coat. You squeeze your hands at your sides, because this is happening. You’re in his house. The hardwood floor is cold under your stocking feet.

You jump when he puts his hands on your shoulders from behind you, holding you a mere inch from his body. You bite your lip when his nose bumps into the back of your head.

“Are you sure about this?”

“You already asked me that,” you reply, letting your head fall back on his shoulder. You want so badly to tell him to tell you what to do. That you don’t want to make any decisions. Brain is worn out. That you want to please him, and not think. Oh, to be a freshmen simply sponging up information.

“I know,” he slides his hands to your biceps and turns you around. “I can check in again, can’t I? He cups your face when you nod. “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes, please,” you have to stop yourself from saying something incriminating, like mister Pike, or sir, or professor.

You clutch the front of his button down to anchor yourself when his lips brush yours. His mouth is soft. It coaxes you to open so he can dive into you, his tongue swipes your bottom lip, and you respond by pressing into him. You stay pliant under him, letting him lead. Your legs feel on the verge of collapse when you break away. You can’t stand it anymore.

“I want to suck your cock.”

Both of you freeze. For a second you wonder if you’ve given him a heart attack. But you watched his thighs on the car ride back and couldn’t stop thinking about kneeling between them. Your mouth waters. Marcus can’t breathe. He’s straining against his zipper. After your declaration he wants it too.

“Okay, honey,” he breathes. He brushes your ear with his thumb. “If that’s what you want, we’ll do that.”

He tries to draw you backward toward his room where he can turn on a lamp and properly pay tribute to your body, but you pull him back. You tug him to his mid-century armchair - he has the twin to it in his office. His mouth goes dry. You have to know. He looks into your face, and from the way you’ve averted your eyes, you know.

“Please?” you say. It sounds like a sob.

From this close you can smell the vanilla and bergamot of his soap. He sits, waiting for you. When you don’t move he holds his hand out for you to take.

“Come here, honey,” he draws you close. The top of your dress swings a little and he groans when he sees the break of your dress to what he thought were tights. Marcus studies your face in the second hand street light - your mouth parted, your eyes blown wide. Your hand in his is hot. “Hey, if this is overwhelming, or not what you want-”

“It is,” you correct him.

“Tell me what’s wrong then,” he requests. You feel pained. If you don’t say it now you never will.

“Tell me what to do.” Your head aches from the stress of carrying it for so long. “I’ve had to make my own decisions for months, and I don’t want to anymore. Just - for five minutes-” you bring your hands to your cheeks and press them against your hot skin. You watch as he realizes what you want. He nods in slow motion.

“Okay,” he says. “Kneel for me.” He gets even harder when you sink to your knees. Your hands rest in your lap. Waiting. He can’t believe this is happening. Thank goodness he’s going back to the Bureau in three months. He couldn’t face the other faculty - fuck, your advisor - after this. Leaning forward he cups your chin and kisses you. You squeeze your thighs together. He kisses your ear and says lowly, “take my cock out, honey. I want you to suck me off.”

When you take him in your mouth as far as you can, you look into his face. His mouth has fallen open. His ears have turned red from flushing. It’s indescribable. It makes your mouth water further around his hard length. It’s heavy on your tongue. You move up and down his shaft leisurely, trying to savor it. Letting saliva run down onto his skin as your tongue works the spongy head. You reach up to work the base with your hand when he tells you ‘no’.

“Just your mouth.” Fuck. You moan around him as a ripple pulls from deep in your core. The vibrations of you moaning make him jolt and heave. For a few moments he apologies while you breathe deeply, then resume. You take a mouthful of him. It’s feasting. It’s mindless.

His fingers brush the side of your face, and tenderly cups the back of your head. You want to make him understand this is what you want. So you slide down as far as you can comfortably, and wait. Swallowing thickly around his length

“Fuck, honey,” he groans. He gets it, taking both hands and moving your head the pace he wants. You can tell he hasn’t been asked for this often. Maybe ever. You close your eyes and just feel. His cock filling your mouth. Aches forming around your jaw. Tears leaking out of your eyes from your concentration. Your pussy wetting through your underwear. Marcus pulling your hair. You swallow hard, then he stops. And pushes you off.

You whine in protest.

“I hear you, honey,” he says softly. His voice is hoarse. “Another time. I want you to unwind right now.” Your pussy clenches.

He takes you back to his bedroom and helps you undress. He lifts your dress over your head, and kneels to help you out of your thigh highs. One day, if you’ll let him, he’ll fuck you with them on, but he likes to see all of a woman the first time he does anything to her. He kisses the bit of skin above the waistband of your panties before standing to kiss your lips. Your help him push them down your hips until they fall to your ankles. The soft gasp he lets out at the sight of your underwear and bare body is nothing short of gluttonous.

“Lay down.”

He strips while you watch. He does it without taking his eyes off of you. There’s hunger in them. This man has an appetite, you know it. The fabric rustles pleasantly between the sound of both of you breathing. Far away, ambulance sirens blare in another neighborhood, but here in his apartment the wet sound of cars passing in the rainy street are the closest accompaniment.

“I want to touch you here,” he tells you, palming your sex and making you squeak. It’s so forward.

“Do it,” you breathe, and part your legs further for him. He leans in and kisses your temple, murmuring ‘good girl’ and you swear you could black out.

You’re already so wet when his fingers part your folds to greet the new territory. “Did sucking my cock get you wet?” He sounds amazed. He tastes one fingertip before putting it back to tease your folds. “I wonder how wet you would be just holding it in your mouth while you read.”

“Oh-” a ripple works down your spine. He smirks. The tip of his finger brushes just inside your lips to tease your entrance.

“I’m going to put my fingers in you. You,” he pauses to kiss your cheek, “relax. You earned it.” He rubs his nose up and down yours, and you nudge him back just as he slips one long finger into you. You’re glad he’s being sweet like this. It’s the perfect blend of firmness and care. You want him to dominate you one someday, maybe, but right here and now, the combination of his low voice and steady fingers is ideal. Marcus kisses your cheek and mouth as he works his finger in and out of you. It’s thick and reaches further than you ever could. You spread your legs even further to tell him, more.

Without removing his hand he moves down your body to lick your clit. He sucks and flicks it as he coaxes more wetness out of your leaking cunt. Carefully he pulls the finger out and presses his wet hand to the inside of your thigh to keep you open. He laps into you, covering the muscles with lubricant because you’re going to need it. You see his face just as he decides you’re ready; it’s contemplative, like he’s concentrating. Then he slides two fingers deep into you.

“Oh, fuck, that’s so fucking good,” your voice crescendos. You reach for his shoulder as he comes up to lie beside you. His skin is warm under your palm. You buck your hips looking for something else, seeking, wanting-

“Stay still.” You still immediately. “Just feel it, baby. I want you to be ready for me.” You know what he means. His cock is thick and smearing against your hip. He was big in your mouth, he’s going to be big while pushing into you. His fingers keep moving while he kisses the tips of your nipples. When he takes one between his teeth and tugs you break. Your mouth opens, and your legs clamp reflexively around his wrist. Your pussy gushes around his fingers - you can feel it. You can feel how his movements change from a drag as a slide. He keeps pumping. He doesn’t give up until he’s sure you’ve felt every aftershock. He’d love to take his time and work a third in one day - if he can - but tonight, he wants to move on. After you swallowed his cock in his sitting room chair he’s been thinking of rewarding you.

You feel him slip his fingers out, and roll away to the nightstand. He looks back at you, and his eyes soften a little before he asks, “do you want me to use a condom?”

“No,” you say and reach for his bicep to pull him back toward you. He comes willingly. “I have an IUD. And I’m clean.” He smiles, flinging the packet over his shoulder. It makes you giggle, but it sounds hysterical to your ears. You watch him reach down and pump his cock with the hand that was just inside you. You close your eyes and take a deep breath.

“Look at me,” he orders. Your eyes snap open. Marcus crashes his lips on yours. The hand not dripping from your cunt cups the back of your head. “I want to see your eyes while I fuck you.”

His blunt head breaks into you, you lose all thought. He sinks further in, until you’re squirming on his length because he’s stretching you. You suck air in and will your body will stay still like he suggested for his fingers. You look into Marcus’s eyes the whole time, trying to tell him how good he feels. You can’t make the words leave your throat. He pulls your head to him, kisses your mouth until you compose yourself and lie still. Then he gets to work. The breadth of him stills you anew. For the first time in months you fully relax, hardly making a sound as he thrusts steadily. You stare into Marcus’s eyes while your mouth falls open as he slides into you, and listen to the wet sounds of your pussy and the bed frame creaking.

Then he starts talking.

“Do you know how good you look in those blue trousers? I want to grab your ass every time you wear them,” he rumbles. His pace picks up a hair, and he feels harder in you somehow. He drops to his forearm. “I love watching it when you walk out of my office.” You knew it. “And that damn cardigan you never wear a shirt under? Those buttons slip right open, don’t they?” He punctuates it with a deep thrust that makes you squeak. “Answer me.”

“Yes.”

“Wear it over for dinner. I’ll bite your tits through it.”

He fucks into you harder, sending shivers up your spine with every thrust. It moves you up the bed until you have to reach a hand up and press back against the headboard. You clutch him with the other, looping around his shoulder to feel the muscles in his arms pull and tug as he moves in you, working you up to another release Soon enough, the coil in your belly tightens and he reaches to worry your clit with deft fingers. His eyes never leave you. You think this man could make the hardest fuck feel like making love.

“I need more,” you tell him. You’re too embarrassed to ask for what you want. A tear leaks out of your eye because his thickness is so good, but you want something else too. You always underestimate him. He grins because he knows - he’s a detective. He figured it out. He leans down to rest his forehead on your temple.

“You’re doing so well,” he says. You arch up into him, your breasts brush his chest. “Your wet pussy is so sweet. It’s taking me so well. Are you gonna be respectful? Gonna listen?” You have to hold your breath as your hips tense. “Be good and come on my cock.” Oh fuck. “Say it.”

Your voice is wet with joy. “Yes, sir.”

“Such a good girl.”

Sparks lick up your back and through your cunt, forcing Marcus deeper into when you lift your lips. He slows to let you enjoy all your release. He kisses your neck, your jaw, your lips. Then when he hears your content sigh, he buries his face in your neck and chases his own release. He comes with an accompanying rumble from deep in his chest. You moan in return and lift your lips to catch him as he slumps, barely holding his weight off of you.

Water runs in the washroom as you tug the sheets back. The light clicks off, and Marcus appears with a washcloth. His dimple appears when you lean back and let him clean your tender flesh. He sits on the edge of the bed next to your hips, running his knuckles on the soft side of your breast.

“Stay the night,” says. “I’ll cook you breakfast.”

“Hm,” you say, mock contemplative. You run your fingers down his chest. He preens under the affection. “I will. I feel really good.” Your cheeks tingle at the admission. He smiles wide and bright.

He comes back from putting the cloth in the hamper. You roll so he can run his hands the length of your side

“Thank you,” you murmur. He lifts his face from where he’s been peppering your waist with kisses. His brow is furrowed in amused confusion. “For being good to me. For caring about what happened to me.” You’ll tell him the horror stories your friends have from their college another time.

He sighs and cups your cheek. “I like doing it. You’re bright. Supporting you is a privilege. Especially when I know that brain is going to put us all to shame one day.” You could cry.

“I’ve liked you since the body farm,” you admit. He wrinkles his nose. “I know. Not very romantic.”

“I liked you since you thought my campus ID was more official than my FBI badge.”

“I didn’t think that!”

“Get some sleep,” he says. A wicked glint comes to his eye. “I am going to wear you out before lunch.” You wiggle to get comfortable in the sheets and he curls over your back to hold you to his chest.

Orange light peeks through the gap in his blackout drapes. You eye him over your shoulder then settle into the pillow. All the tension in your shoulders is gone.

part 2

#marcus pike #marcus pike fanfiction #the mentalist #marcus pike x reader #marcus pike x you #reader insert #fanfiction #writing #the mentalist fanfiction #I took some liberties with UT's school of anthros forensics lab #it does exist #DO NOT LOOK UP PICTURES #IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH #DON'T DO IT #I AM NOT SQUEAMISH AND DO RESEARCH WITH CADAVERS #BUT IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH #DONT #DO #IT

528 notes · View notes