He said, and I’m sure he was drunk, ‘This is the worst essay I’ve ever read.’
I took a long pull on my pint then picked up an essay from my own pile. ‘I’ll see your Origins of the First World War and I’ll raise you Kaiser Wilhelm – a misunderstood man. Query,’ and let the three pages of A4 slip to the table and nestle in a puddle of beer.
‘Well,’ he slurred, taking more essays from the pile. ‘Rich pickings indeed: first years – what do you expect?’
I wasn’t as drunk as Prof. I thought, ‘They might expect us not to mark their assignments in the pub.’
I’d been teaching history for a couple of semesters. My PhD’s in Chaucer’s poetry, so I couldn’t figure why the uni. thought I’d make a good fit.
Money for old rope. Nobody cared. Not the prof. obviously, not the Dean, and the vice-chancellor was busy brown-nosing the P.M. for a place on the upcoming educational standards commission.
We shouldn’t be in a pub – especially not this pub – too many students get in there. Maybe not the historians, more the layabouts in drama. There was a group in the next cubbyhole; I could smell them.
How much did we charge students? God, if they only knew. No, I’m too generous, they didn’t give a flying fart so long as we gave them a 2:1 or a first when they graduated.
I picked up our empty glasses and pushed my way to the bar.
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 