Uni

It had never crossed Professor Dinklebert’s mind that the students of his Ancient History lectures would not appreciate him repeatedly being five minutes late, because he hated them all. Being late was a talent really, because he certainly had enough time to leave at eleven and be early (each year he requested to the faculty head that his lessons start no earlier than twelve o’clock due to a self-diagnosed bout of insomnia he had experienced once). But it was always a sudden eleven thirty and an “Oh bloody hell- the time!”

As for where his hatred of students had come from, he could never recall. Until it was time for group discussions, when they murdered Caesar all over again and simplified Sparta to the film 300 and he was forced to nod along and say, “A very interesting opinion,” because he needed to keep his job. It was a miserable existence and Professor Dinklebert hated himself every second of it, for being such a bystander to Ancient History’s slow death to STEM, for hitting a dead-end on his lifelong theory on Ancient Roman cutlery, for his book only being read because it was on his class’s reading list.

But what could he do? It was too late for a career change. Teaching was all he could do. He couldn’t face teaching in school because children were noisy troublemakers who would do anything to get a reaction. It had to be the university, with those bores known as academics that Professor Dinklebert passionately avoided but found himself too often stuck with. He listened to stories of breakthroughs in the Ancient Roman toothbrush study and laughed in secret at its pointlessness. After hearing a dozen similar projects, he thought back to his own research on cutlery and it dawned on him: he was exactly like them, and what the hell had he been doing with his life? He was in his forties, still single, looked aged and pale in the mirror, and had not one true friend to his name.

There had to be a solution. Professor Dinklebert longed to be remembered as a titan of Ancient History, not more forgotten than Thucydides. What could he do? It came to him one morning that he must quit his job. But by the time he had arrived five minutes late to his meeting with the faculty, all resolve had left him. He only spoke of the insomnia, how it was going through a particularly rough patch, and left after being awarded his twelve o’clock lecture time for the next year.

The meeting had been in the morning, and it struck Professor Dinklebert it had been too long since he had been out this early. The sun was full of promise, the temperature was still undecided, and on the side of the road, on the wasteland, just past the traffic of people and cars, a single sapling flicked from side to side in the gentlest wind, leaves losing colour as Autumn neared. It was the way it glowed in the light that reduced him to tears, though if they were from sadness, he couldn’t tell.