"Extra Credit"

I had hoped to avoid this situation.  In a class this low level and this large, and this full of pathetic idiots, I knew there was a risk.

Plenty of students did terribly on the first exam.  When I handed back the tests I assured them that there would be no miraculous extra credit, or - even worse - test corrections to save them from their own lack or preparation. A few complained, a few dropped the class, quite a number more said nothing, didn't react, and will most likely continue to quietly fail until the end of the semester.  Every now and then a student will see their terrible grade and react differently.

A few days after I handed back the tests I was in my office.  I was not thinking about calculus at the time.  No, I was doing something far more enjoyable - preparing a lecture on analytic spaces for my advanced class.  I heard a knock at my door.

A girl came in, looking like she had just stepped off a downtown street corner.  Her chest looked like it was about to fall out of the very low top of her shirt, and she seemed to have to have just enough skirt to avoid arrest for indecent exposure. I don't know if she had dressed up specifically for the occasion, or if that was how she normally dressed.  It's hard to tell these days where they draw the line between "casual" and "whorish."  I tried to tell myself that this is an overreaction to the relaxing of dress codes that children experience when moving from high school to college, but even by those standards it seemed extreme.

She closed the door behind her, and asked to talk about the test.  She grabbed a chair and pulled it around to the side of my desk, so there is nothing between the two of us.  I tell her, as discussed in class, there is nothing else to be done about her grade.  She had her test in her hand, and leaned over as though she wants to show it to me, but seemed to be using this motion as an excuse to expose her chest.  Then she said it.  She asked if there was anything we could work out, just the two of us, to help her get a good grade in the class.  Anything other than homework and tests.

I'm not an idiot.  I know there are plenty of professors who are willing to...indulge themselves this way.  As long as it doesn't become public knowledge, no one seems to care other than the occasional bit of righteous indignation.  But I have no interest.  Aside from the fact that I have no interest in tarnishing my integrity by selling out grades, if someone is so willing to offer up their body when they have trouble getting something they want, I shudder to think what sort of vast ecosystem of disease lurks in their flesh.

The trouble is, someone who starts down this road and makes this proposal is likely to be equally as troublesome if denied.  I had a colleague who had to step down from his position because of a sexual assault scandal.  He insists, and based on my knowledge of him I believe him, that all he did was reject the advances of a student looking to improve their grade by any means.  But he had made enemies in the wrong places, so the consensus was not on his side.

I have no interest in dealing with either of these outcomes, so thankfully I have a third option available to me. I looked the girl in the eye and told her, "Okay, let me show you something."  She smiled in what appeared to be an attempt at being alluring and stood up straighter, thrusting her chest out before her.  I mostly ignored it and pulled out a piece of paper and put it on the desk next to the two of us.  I scribbled a few things on it.

"I wasn't talking about math," she said with a frown.

"I know.  Let me show you this first."

"Okay.  Whatever you're into."  She leaned toward the paper, but also toward me, and gave me an odd look.  She seemed to be trying to act alluring again.  Pathetic.

I drew quickly on the paper.  She looked down and got that resistant, bored look that students get when they see a board full of graphs, symbols, and equations connecting them together.  All her conscious mind saw was mathematics too advanced for her to ever comprehend.  She almost said something, but her voice caught in her throat.  She stared at the paper.  While her conscious mind could make no sense of what she saw, her subconscious saw and comprehended just enough to feel compelled to look directly at it, and then it was trapped.  The lines on the page drew in her mind, and held it fast.  I drew a few more lines, and her eyes widened and her jaw fell slack.  I drew a few more, showing her more than a normal person should ever see, and you could almost hear her mind snap like a tendon stretched too far too fast.

I picked up the paper and held it in front of myself.  Her gaze followed it, but slowly, like she wasn't fully awake.  "You will leave here, and you will drop my class."  She nodded slowly.  "You will not bother any professor ever again for any reason."  She nodded again.  As I crumpled up the paper she blinked and shook her head.  She didn't quite have the light in her eyes that she did a few minutes ago.

I patted her on the knee.  "Thanks for coming in.  You have a good day now."

"Oh...okay..."  She stood up and walked out of my office.  Good riddance.  A troublesome mind has been made less so.

I unfolded the paper I had scribbled on and put it in my shredder.  It wouldn't do to have one of my grad students, or worse still, maintenance staff, see that and hurt themselves.