Chapter 6 Anode and Cathode
ANODE AND CATHODE
From: Bobbylicious@
Subject: thermo paper
omg I forgot to write it can I turn it in late? im sorry i was at wedding last weekend and got soooo high i’ve been out of it for the whole week.
From: [email protected]
Subject: No fair!
A B- on my Vibrations paper? Offensive. I’m emailing the Dean about this.
No rest for the adjunct.
As in, contractually: adjuncts cannot take time off.
Since I’ll be busy interviewing, I prerecorded lessons and scrambled to find instructors to cover my classes.
But I need to reply to students’ messages—while fantasizing about “accidentally” misspelling my email in next year’s syllabus.
When I arrive on the MIT campus, I’m still answering the odd May I have an extension email.
The one thing adjuncting has done for me is hone my teaching skills, so I’m not too nervous about today’s demonstration.
That is, till Monica meets me at the entrance of the physics building and tells me darkly, “You’ll be evaluated by me, Volkov, and Smith-Turner.”
Instant. Stomach. Knot.
“I see.” Maybe it’s like figure skating at the Winter Olympics, where the highest and lowest scores get automatically tossed out?
“But don’t worry.” She darts up the stairs, and I struggle to keep up in my pencil skirt.
(The thigh highs are proving surprisingly comfortable, if .
. . drafty.) “I’ve seen your student evals—you’re an excellent lecturer.
” She takes a right and guides me through a series of doors.
“You’ll be teaching a graduate class, and the Ph.D.
students will be asked to weigh in and give their impressions of you.
Keep that in mind and do the thing where you make them feel important.
Stupid questions don’t exist, yada yada.
” She stops outside a closed door and bites her lip. “There’s something else.”
“What is it?” I’m a little winded.
She clears her throat. “I really tried to get your demonstration to be for another group of students.”
Oh? “Why?”
“Because the faculty member who teaches this one—”
“Dr. Hannaway!” We both turn. Volkov is waddling toward us, grinning like we go way back and he used to babysit me. “Do you know the one about the radio that only works in the morning?”
I force myself to smile. God, I’m tired. “The AM radio?”
He laughs, delighted. Monica discreetly rolls her eyes, opens the door, and gestures me inside, our coaching session cut short.
The first thing I notice is Jack—which is unsurprising.
He’s a giant mountain of muscles, after all, and there’s probably a physics equation that explains his annoying habit of becoming the center of mass of every room he burdens with his presence.
He’s standing behind the podium, tinkering with the computer, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, as though the world outside is not relapsing into an ice age.
The lines of his tattoo curl around a biceps that frankly no one, no one who doesn’t work out for a living should have.
I still can’t tell what the ink’s supposed to form.
In theory, it’s a scene I know well. The few minutes leading up to the start of class: students enjoying the last few seconds with their phones, the instructor scrambling to pull up the PowerPoint against all IT odds (missing cables, incompatibility issues, never-ending Windows 10 updates).
In practice, there are about twenty pairs of eyes in the room, and they’re all fixed on Jack with a mix of admiration, respect, and awe, like he’s the dominant turkey of the mating season.
Okay.
So the MIT grad body fanboys over Jack.
Fantastic.
“—whether it’s true or not,” a young man with faded green hair is saying, “that Christopher Nolan uses you as a consultant on all his movies?”
Jack shakes his head, and I see the muscles cording his neck. Breaking news: necks have muscles. “I will not be blamed for Tenet, Cole,” he replies, and everyone laughs.
I hate him. Though that’s not news. What is news is how he looks in my direction and politely says, as though last night I didn’t threaten to feed his rotting corpse to the earthworms, “Welcome, Dr. Hannaway. I started the monitor for you.” He’s smiling, but there’s an edge to it.
A challenge. Like he’s asking me to jump into a puddle that’s actually twenty feet deep.
“Thank you.” Our arms brush together on my way to the podium. I remember his hands, warm, unwavering around my waist, a hushed settle down murmured against my temple, and I suppress a shiver.
Have I mentioned that I hate him?
“Good morning, and thank you for having me,” I say once my PowerPoint is loaded. The class is (predictably) 90 percent male and (predictably) made of students who are around my age.
It’s complicated, being a woman in STEM.
Even more so when you’re young and unproven.
And even more so when you have a semi-pathological need to get along with others.
As the only female grad in my department, I’ve had ample opportunity to contemplate the tightrope that those who are not white cishet men tread in academic spaces.
Do I want to be seen as a congenial, affable colleague?
Yes, and thanks to a lifetime of APE, I know the exact combination to achieve that: charming self-deprecation, modesty, humorous tangents, admitting to doubt and fallibility.
It’s not rocket science (incidentally, a branch of experimental physics I’m obliged to scoff at).
Using jokes and simple examples to be a charismatic, engaging speaker is a pretty textbook way to come across as a likable guy.
Guy being the operative word. Because when you’re a woman talking about your research, there are anywhere between one and a million STEMlords ready to exploit every little weakness—every little sign that you’re not a lean, mean science machine.
The you people want is sharp, impeccable, perfect enough to justify your intrusion in a field that for centuries has been “rightfully” male.
But not too perfect, because apparently only “stone-cold bitches” are like that, and they do not make for congenial, affable colleagues.
STEM culture has been a boys’ club for so long, I often feel like I can be allowed to play only if I follow the rules men made. And those rules? They downright suck.
Like I said, a tightrope. With a bunch of crocodiles throwing their maws open in wait for fresh meat.
Well. Here goes. I make my smile a combination of warm and self-assured that doesn’t exist in nature, and say, “Since this class deals with current topics in physics, I’ve prepared a lecture on Wigner crystals, a highly discussed—”
A groan.
Did someone groan?
I look around, puzzled. Students stare at me expectantly.
I imagined it.
“Wigner crystallization occurs when electron gases that live in a periodic lattice—”
“Excuse me?” Cole. Of the green hair. “Dr. Hannaway, are you going to talk about the topic of Wigner crystals from a theoretical perspective?”
“Great question. Mostly theory, but I’ll give an overview of the experimental evidence, too.” Next slide—and perfect segue. “Once we achieved the ability to create large inter-electronic distances, Wigner crystallization—”
“Excuse me.” Cole. Again. “A question.”
I smile patiently. I’m used to this. The last time I presented at a conference, some dude well, actually’d me before I even pulled up my PowerPoint. “Of course, go ahead.”
“My question is . . . what’s the point of this?”
Several people laugh. I sigh internally. “Excuse me?”
“Isn’t it a bit useless, talking about theories for hours?” He talks slowly but earnestly. Like he’s Steve Jobs unveiling a new phone. “Shouldn’t we focus on the actual applications?”
I open my mouth to ask who hurt him—Did Michio Kaku bully you, Cole? Did Feynman steal your lunch money?—but my eyes fall on Volkov. He’s giving me an interested look, like he’s curious to see how I’ll deal with this shitgibbon. Next to him, Monica’s lips are flat and resigned. And behind her . . .
Jack.
Who never bothered to sit. He leans against the wall, arms crossed over his chest in a casual Yeah, I work out way, staring at me like a brown recluse spider on steroids.
His sharp, unyielding eyes miss nothing, but whatever emotion I managed to squeeze from him last night is gone, and I’m back to having no clue what he’s thinking. He’s like a closed book.
No, he’s like a book on fire. Fahrenheit 451—no words to read, just ashes and the abyss.
Everything clicks together. I fill in the blanks of my interrupted conversation with Monica: it’s Jack who teaches this class.
Jack, who has lots of opinions about theorists.
Jack, who indoctrinated his students into believing that people like me are the enemy.
Jack, whose sexual fantasies likely involve me failing to defend my discipline to two dozen hostile dudes.
I bet he gets off to recordings of me mispronouncing syzygy at the eleventh-grade science fair.
This is a setup. The teaching demonstration was always going to be my Titanic—the ship, not the high-grossing motion picture.
Except that, no.
I hold Jack’s eyes and give him my sweetest, most feral smile. You underestimated me, it says, and he knows it. Because he half smiles back and nods minutely—devious, ready, coiled. Have I, Elsie?
It’s on.
“You make a really good point, Cole.” I set down my clicker and wander from behind the podium.
“Theoretical physics can be a waste of time.” I take off my suit jacket, even though it’s cold.
I glance down at my abdomen to make sure the bump of my pod is not visible.
I’m basically one of you. Two, three years older?
Look, I’m sitting on the table. Let’s be friends.
“Who would agree? Show of hands.” It takes a few seconds of exchanged Is this a trap?
looks, but 80 percent of the hands are up in no time.
That’s when I raise my own, too.
They laugh. “Aren’t you a theorist, Dr. Hannaway?” someone asks.