I shrug nonchalantly, even though I'm getting more irritated by the second. "That's why you hire good people."
But she keeps going. "What if you get injured – you blow out your knee or get hit on the head one too many times? What's your fallback plan? You barely pass your classes and graduate with nothing to show for it, and you have nothing to fall back on if things go south. Then you're the guy with the knee injury working as a used car salesman who used to be that guy who was a famous football player once."
"Football is my fallback plan." My voice is far too loud for the student center. We're in a private room, but it still echoes off the walls. I hit my palm on the table and Cassie flinches. Shit. For a second I feel badly about yelling, but she's the one who's on my case about my fucking life goals. I don't need a lecture from a girl who's supposed to be getting me to pass my damn classes. "Football is the only plan, all right? I don't need a lecture about valuing education. I need you to do your job and get me to pass my fucking classes so I can play the game."
I think I might have scared her off by yelling, but she just crosses her arms over her chest and looks at me for a long minute, her expression unreadable.
Then she leans forward, her hands on the table. "Do that again and you figure out your own damn schoolwork."
7
Cassie
My advisor looks across from his desk at me, his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose. "This is … not what I expect from you, Cassie."
I swallow hard. I'm supposed to be further along on my thesis than this, a fact that Professor Richards keeps reminding me of via email after nagging email. And now I just gave him a lame proposed thesis topic. "I know. It's the topic. I'm not sure –"
"It's not interesting," he says. "Toss it."
"Excuse me?"
"I can tell you're not interested in it." He pulls off his reading glasses and sets them on the desk. "This is my research area, not yours. Give me something better. It's your thesis, Cassie. It's not mine. You're supposed to roll this into your dissertation, so it had better be something you're interested in doing for the next few years."
"Right," I say absently. Why can’t I get that stupid jock out of my head?
"Did you hear anything I just said, Cassie?"
"Yeah," I reply, pausing to look down at my notepad. There's nothing written, no notes detailing what we’ve even been talking about during this meeting. Just a doodle of my initials and a couple of flowers. Like I'm a sixth grader. At least it's not a doodle of Colton's initials. "Totally. That's a good idea."
"You need a new thesis topic," he insists. "Preferably something you're interested in. And something publishable. At least if you still want to pursue a career in academia."
"I do," I say firmly.
"Are you sure everything's okay?" he asks, his expression concerned. Professor Richards is a great advisor. He's basically the professorial version of Santa Claus, kind and good-natured, except in Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops most of the year.
"Absolutely. I was just distracted by finding a teaching position and… it has a slightly steeper learning curve than I expected."
"I forgot about that. You're teaching at…"
"I'm tutoring at the athletic center," I finish for him. "One of the football players."
Professor Richards leans back in his chair. "That's interesting. Have you thought about going in that direction?"
"For my thesis?" I ask.
"Football teams are an interesting in-group,” he points out. “Or there’s –“
“Masculine identity in college football players." It pops into my head, just like that, and I blurt it out.
“You should run with that."
I shake my head, reconsidering my impulsive idea. “I can’t use anything I learn while tutoring,” I say. “I signed a non-disclosure agreement.”
“You don’t need specifics,” he assures me. “It’s a proposed study. Propose it and then for your dissertation, you’ll see if you can get permission to run it through the athletic center.”
Professor Richards is right. I wouldn’t be using anything I learned while tutoring in my thesis, and maybe my sessions Colton King will give me insight I wouldn’t otherwise have.
Masculine identity in college football players. I wonder if winding up underneath one of them counts as "research".
* * *
“So?” Sable yells over the excessively loud music in the bar. We’re at one of the cheapest happy hours in town, which makes it the favorite hangout for poor college students everywhere. Cheap drinks and tacos – the perfect combination.
Coupled with an interrogation by my roommate.
“So what?” I ask, scooping up a glob of queso on a tortilla chip. I pop it into my mouth and crunch so that I have an excuse not to answer her questions.
“You know what I’m asking, so don’t play coy,” Sable yells. “How did it go?”
“I signed a confidentiality thing, Sable."