I followed her to a couple of chairs in the front row, and we each got out our notepads and pens after sitting down.
“Here we go again,” Kat said. She brushed her curly hair behind her head, revealing a little hoop earring at the top her ear. She wore a matching nose ring through one of her nostrils.
I shifted around in my seat. “I wish we didn’t have to waste our time on these things.”
“They’re not too bad,” she said.
“I guess I already feel overwhelmed with all of our classes. And clinicals.”
Kat was one of the few friends I’d made in college. The only one, really. She and I were both in the nursing program, and we both randomly had been awarded the same scholarship that required attending these tedious workshops. She and I were also both serious about doing well in school. But as similar as we appeared to be, we had our differences.
“I don’t view our clinicals as burdens,” she contended. “That’s when we get to actually do something. That’s, like, the real stuff that we’ll need to know.”
My prosody was rich with sarcasm when I said, “Yeah. They’re great.”
She was smirking at me. “You’ll get used to them at some point. Did I tell you about what happened to me yesterday?”
She proceeded to tell me some story about a riff between her and her roommate. I listened half-heartedly as she went on, a thousand words flying out her mouth each minute. That was the thing about Kat that was difficult for me. The thing that made me keep a wall up between the two of us and view her as what I thought of as just a school friend. She was a little on the egocentric side, and it never took long before she transitioned into talking about herself and nothing but herself.
“So, I told her, I can’t make my morning smoothies if she doesn’t leave me any space in the fridge for spinach. It’s not that complicated to just make some room for me. And, it’s not like I haven’t offered to make extra so she can try it out. I mean, it’s healthy, but then she tells me it looks like an animal vomited up—”
“Welcome, students.”
A male voice and a bit of screechy feedback sounded through the speakers of the room, cutting off Kat’s story. I snapped my head up to see an older man on the stage, standing in front of a microphone.
“I’m Dr. Hammond of the Political Science Department. Can you all hear my okay?” He tapped at the microphone.
Kat and I exchanged brief, skeptical glances.
“Okay, then. I think we’re ready to start now. Thank you so much for joining our workshop, Government & Politics Today. We’re happy to have you here so we can all learn together. I am sure this will be a wonderful experience for us all.”
I wasn’t so sure. Politics was perhaps my least favorite topic on the planet. I found it endlessly boring and uninteresting, and the professor, Dr. Hammond, was not making me feel any more optimistic about the subject. He wore a plain, brown suit, had matching brown hair, and sported a pair of circular glasses. You could practically see vapors of boredom radiating from his body.
“I’m going to go ahead and hand you off to the man who volunteered to take the reins of this workshop. A former student of mine, now in his last year of law school on campus, and an overall prime example for the younger adults here—David Valentine.”
Unimpressed and still bored, I expected to see a younger version of Dr. Hammond appear on stage, another brown-suited, glasses-donning academic type. Instead, a well-dressed, blonde, young man came into view. He looked fit, maybe in his late twenties, and had a bright smile that revealed a set of dimples.
Taken aback, I looked over at Kat. She had her head tilted, her pen resting at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were fixed on our new speaker.
“Thanks, Dr. H.” David Valentine took the microphone out of its stand and casually began pacing the stage while Dr. Hammond made his exit.
“That was quite an opening,” he continued speaking, his voice moving around the room, smooth and mellow, like warm tea down your throat. “I’m really not that remarkable, trust me. I remember exactly what it was like to be you guys. Younger, working your asses off in school, probably irritated that you have to be somewhere like this, right?”
I was still trying to take him in and process this. I’d never had a workshop teacher who spoke like this. Who looked like this.
“You probably have better things to do right now, right? You guys are busy; I get it. So, look, I don’t want to waste your time. I’m not here to bore you to death. For tonight’s session, I just want you to do one thing. Get out a piece of paper and write down what politics means to you. More specifically, I want you to think about political leaders and what you would like to see in today’s governors, congressmen, senators, any kind of politician. Just keep it brief and write down whatever comes to mind. You can close your eyes for a second if you want and see what images pop up in your head. Write down a few sentences. Then we’ll go around the room and share them. Please say your names for me before you share, that way I can start getting to know you guys.”
He gave us ten minutes to brainstorm and write our few sentences down. I closed my eyes like he recommended, but the only images that popped up were of him. I quickly gave up on that method. When the time was up, we went around the room, and everyone read their ideas out loud. I had tried to come up with something safe and vague but was still nervous when it was my turn to share. Kat had written something about wanting to be able to relate to politicians and see aspects of herself in them. No surprise there.
“Excellent,” David Valentine intoned into the microphone once everyone had finished. “Okay, you guys. I don’t want to take up any more of your time. We’re going to wrap it up there for the evening. I would like to give you one bit of homework, if I may: don’t do any homework tonight. Go home, watch a movie, give yourselves a break for the night, okay? I’ll see you all in a few weeks.”
Everyone applauded when he stepped back from the microphone, which was not a normal occurrence at these workshops. I turned my head around to scan the audience behind me. Just about every student in the auditorium, particularly every girl, was smiling. It was like everyone had just finished a free ice cream sundae buffet. Again, not a normal reaction at these events.
“See? That wasn’t so bad,” Kat remarked as she and I put our notebooks away and got up to leave. “It made me feel good, actually. I liked that he listened to what I had to say.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess that was all right.”
We meandered past the seats, slowly approaching the nearest exit. I was actually pretty eager to get out of there and follow the law student’s advice. Go home, maybe read a book, and just rest for the evening. I was going to need to reserve my energy for the long week ahead.
Before Kat and I had reached the exit doors, she suddenly leaned in toward me and whispered, “Oh my god, Drew, he’s looking at us.”
“Who?”
“Shh. Look.”
She nodded her head toward the right, and my gaze followed her motion. The workshop teacher, David Valentine, was leaning against a wall not far away, his arms crossed over his chest.
Kat was wrong; he wasn’t looking at us. But he was looking right at me. When I met his eyes, he grinned. My social skills had apparently abandoned me in that moment. I continued to simply stare at him, not knowing what to do. Then he walked over to us.