The clock of the lecture room crawls closer to the end, but the time refuses to move faster. Students around me fidget; doodling on notepads and flicking through phones and Ipads under their desks.
Anxiety is common in this workshop, lasting almost three hours. Other professors give us a ten-minute break after ninety minutes or so, but Professor Yilmaz is a dragon. I've never even seen him smile. Every lecture he stands stiff, stock-still behind the lectern. He barely moves from that spot, but when he does, it's to tower over some unsuspecting student in the front row who dared to question him.
Professor Yilmaz has a reputation around college - his subject knowledge and intelligence matching his flaming temper. I've never been directly subjected to said temper, but to see him display it with others is fascinating.
I find everything about him fascinating from his accomplishment in graduating the first in his class at the age of 17, earning his bachelor degree to getting his PhD at the age of 24.
I find it fascinating to watch him teach. His brilliance shows in the way he teaches.
Today, though, I'm like my classmates; restless, bored, unable to pay attention. It's almost time to pick up Roya and Layan, but the Professor was still not even remotely done with finishing his lecture on the exploitation of the genetic manipulation of microorganisms.
I was so distracted that it takes me a few seconds to notice movement around me. The class has been dismissed, so I gather up my belongings and start to shuffle out of my row.
"Miss Muhammad ?" Professor Yilmaz stands from his desk as the majority of students files out of the lecture hall. The deep tone of his voice sends a strange sort of fizzing through my body, starting in the depths of my stomach and spreading outward, coursing through my veins and into my too-fast-beating heart.
"May I see you for a few minutes?"
I swallow around the golf ball-sized lump in my throat and move forward on shaky legs, down the shallow steps of the lecture theatre and towards the front of the room. The Professor's eyes remain on me as I move closer, and I have to look away. He's looking at me like I'm dirt on his shoe, the disdain apparent in the way his lips curl into a sneer.
He's never looked at me like this. He's always been friendly and pleasant to me. As his student of two courses, he and I have never talked much except when my friend Mariam begs me to ask the professors some of her questions that she is too shy to ask herself, and we've never had any issues since I would never disagree with him or question him since Professor Yilmaz always says at the beginning of every course that he isn't responsible for you to understand everything and that as a college student you should do the research on your own if you disagree with him.
Many students would argue that he wasn't a conventional professor with being a professor of medicine at the age of 28 now, he is one of the best-looking professors in the department and with that comes every girl from freshmen to seniors going to ask him questions from subjects that he doesn't even teach that is why I didn't think much when I saw the line in front of his department as we arrived at his office.
As we arrived at his door, he opened the door for me as he signalled for me to enter his office while he spoke, "Guys, I have talked to your professors, and they don't appreciate that I answer their questions so I would appreciate it if you asked them instead of me and as for my students, your grades are final on the last paper, and I am not going to change them,"
"But," I heard one of the students argue.
"I am sorry, I need to go if you have any other questions, don't bother emailing me," He said before he closed the door.
As I approach, he turns and sits in his chair again, gesturing with one hand to the chair on the other side of the desk. I sit down directly opposite him, my eyes falling to the thick stack of papers on his office. I recognize my own handwriting on the top paper.
I also see his red pen all over it
I am screwed.
