Betrayal

I must be aging: this year it feels more tiresome to walk miles and miles to and from work, every day, in the bitter cold. … More tiresome and more tiring. During spare half-hours at IUSB I wander the hallways, searching for armchairs in which to sleep.

Today the Saudi students have taken the best armchairs. I go away. … I return. The Saudis have not stopped sitting. I wander remoter hallways.

Through sheer winsomeness I’ve coaxed my IUSB students to read their textbooks on time. (Earlier in the semester, hardly any of them would do this.) But at Bethel my students have regressed: a few weeks ago, when I assigned Descartes, they stopped bothering to read at all. So now I must coerce them with quizzes. Oh how they complain. I’m tempted to remind them of the Parable of the Two Sons.

It’s a feeling I must come to terms with as I walk those miles in the cold.

I feel betrayed, I say to my friend, the college administrator, at McDonald’s.

Betrayed! he laughs. They’re undergraduates. What did you expect.

Vegetarians off of the wagon, we comfort ourselves with double cheeseburgers.