Fat Superhero

I don't think it requires much imagination to understand that grad school is stressful. It is fraught with this polar tension between complete self confidence and complete self doubt, causing identity issues and crying jags of the likes you've never seen. But for one of my classmates, identity is much more complicated than that.

Wednesday night the toughest class I'll have to get through began. There is a light at the end of the tunnel as this is the final course we must take before our comprehensive exams in January. After that, one more class and then I have a degree. Woosh. So close. This class normally has about 25 students but so many are finishing this year which means our poor professor has 31. That means, for every ten-page paper each of us write, she has 31 ten-page papers to grade.

Back to the story. This guy is a heavy-set Asian kid with a shaved head who always wears button-ups and jeans. He is mellow, maybe kinda stoney-baloney, and looks at his watch CONSTANTLY. Wednesday night we all thought class would start at 7, we would read the syllabus and be outta there by 8, 8:30 maybe. NOT SO MUCH.

I noticed this guy getting agitated around 9pm. He'd check his watch, frown a little, look around. Then, at 9:25, way before we were done, he started packing his backpack up to go. This is offensive to professors, especially our professor for the capstone class. She will call you out. She is a member of the Sass Police. He packs up, walks over to her while we are in a circle, discussing Wilson, Weber and Hegel, and whispers to her that he has to go - points at the clock. The next thing that happened made me think he might be a superhero: He opened the door, turned the corner, and BOLTED. I'm talking, Bruce Jenner-level sprints. He is a fat kid. Looks like he's bored and about to nap and he TOOK OFF LIKE A SHOT, each footstep echoing in the empty hallway.

Oh my god, Brian is a superhero.

I kept waiting for the sound of glass crashing as he flew out the second story. WOOOOOSH!

That explains why he was looking at his watch so crazed. He saw the bat signal and had to BOLT.

Or maybe time ran out on the meter, who knows.