Professor, Professor || BWAM

the forty-first.

From: <<zkazem@nusol.ca>>

To: <<sselassie@nusol.ca>>

Good morning, Dean.

I hope you are well.

I am writing to ask if you would relieve Miss Adebayo of her duties as my teacher's assistant. I'm afraid that Miss Adebayo's and my teaching styles are not compatible and are proving to be detrimental to the students.

With that being said, Miss Adebayo is a bright and completely capable student, and I hope that this request does not reflect on her person. She has grand potential and is light years ahead of her peers. In fact, Neruda should consider itself lucky to have a student of her caliber.

Although it has been a pleasure to work with her, I feel that our relationship-

Bad word to use. I backspace.

Our arrangement is no longer necessary. I acknowledge that I have been quite obstinate in the past with the TA program, but I am willing to accept another teacher's assistant. My students have grown quite fond of her as well-

'As well'. I immediately erase the words. I almost called myself out.

However, the next TA has some big shoes to fill, as Miss Adebayo was beyond excellent at her job and impressively thorough. So thorough in fact, that she even had me rewrite some of my own course material (and you know how precise I am), and she directly correlates to the downward trend of dropouts in my 200-level courses...

—----

I stop and read over my email and start to realize that it's more concerned with me drooling over Adeola's amazing qualities than reasons why I want her to be dismissed. It's completely counterproductive and potentially a smoking gun if it were to land in the hands of any gossipers still looking to drag my name through the mud.

Besides, I just don't have the heart to send it. It doesn't feel like me. Which is strange to think because most of my life I've gotten by on pretending to be the person that people expect me to be whilst pushing down my real words and feelings.

Now, I've gotten comfortable with letting my true self come out more.

 Adeola used to ask me these questions that I wouldn't know how to answer. She would amaze me with them. We spent so much time together in and out of class that she had been able to see several sides of me and she was perfectly capable of slipping underneath the mask I regularly put on for others and penetrating down to my real personality.

I got to disarm around her. Take a break from being this perfectly polished, professional version of myself that's got it all together and doesn't fall in love with his teacher assistants.

Fuck...

I'm in love with Adeola.