G reetings, Dr. Hudson, Dr. Hull, and Professor Camwiddie,
Imagine my surprise when, upon arriving to meet the flight at the Binghamton Airport, I found out that the chartered flight for Cancun was already fully booked and not a single research or graduate assistant was in sight (although I observed a great many members of your extended families disembarking from the airport shuttle).
My pre-purchased ticket (see meeting notes) was nonexistent.
I was forced to return home. I assume this was just some oversight, and all the other assistants were notified in a timely manner via email, while I, being a recent addition to the department, must have been left off of the distribution list. If, in the future, you change your plans about research trips and my presence on them, please make sure to communicate this clearly with at least a week’s notice.
Have a wonderful trip. See you after Spring Break.
Warmly,
Jared Lochenko
M.S. Bio
M.S. Chem
M.S. Geothermal Engineering
Seething, I hit send after making sure Dean Whitaker is CC’d on this email. Hull, Hudson, and Camwiddie wouldn’t seriously try to fake a research trip on the university’s dime, would they?
I slam my laptop shut.
The hell they wouldn’t. Dean Whitaker can sort them out.
“Don’t get discouraged, Jared,” I tell myself, looking around my dark apartment at the suitcases I threw back inside in a fit of anger.
It’s a new job—and Hull, Hudson, and Camwiddie might not be the greatest, but I love everything else about Pine Ridge.
I love the campus that bustles on one side of the little river that is so narrow in one or two places that you can cross by footbridge.
You cross the river, head into town, and.
.. you step back in time. There are little stores and people who wave.
There are rents you can afford and only one big grocery store in town.
There’s an open-air market every night, and I just feel. .. Happy when I’m here.
Not lonely.
Okay. A little lonely.
I sigh and slowly open my window, letting the fresh mountain air in.
Patsy never liked the windows open at night.
Patsy never liked anything I did once we were married. Not my weight or my glasses or when I tried to grow a beard...
God damn it, Patsy, why would you marry a chunky boy who could repair your VCR and diagnose your pet parakeet’s fungal infection if you didn’t want a sexy science nerd?
That’s right. I’ve embraced what I am. I pack a six-pack... of twenty-sided dice. I’m thick—in the middle. I don’t have pecs... I have specs.
This is why I’m alone, in a little one-bedroom apartment, without the dog I brought her for Christmas that I thought would be our “practice baby,” without the good china my parents bought us for a wedding present, and without everything I put into our joint savings account for the last four years.
Patsy was always after me to take an elaborate Spring Break vacation.
As a research assistant in a college department, I was always supposed to get a week or two off.
Annnnd like most research assistants at a certain well-established university, I was always asked to work on some big project for half of it.
Like a pushover, I always said yes.
Well, not this time. I believed I was needed on that trip.
I didn’t realize they were just covering their asses in the staff meeting, knowing they were talking about a phony trip and having to say the right thing in front of the dean, all while hazing the new guy, making him think he’s going on some cool research trip when they’re all laughing up their sleeves.
No more. I called them out.
Jared Lochenko is done being pushed around by life.
From now on, I’m in control of my own destiny!
I look at the clock, the digital numbers on the cable box, the only light in my dark apartment.
Almost midnight, and I only just got back, thanks to those saps.
They’d better treat me like a prince when they come back.
Research assistants can make or break a team.
Publish or perish? Yeah, and your research assistant is the one who makes that possible—in either case.
With a sudden stomp, I stand. I don’t care if it’s midnight. I don’t care if I’m always in bed by eleven and up at seven, without fail.
I’m making microwave popcorn—I don’t have to go to work tomorrow!
I’m watching an old John Candy movie—I don’t have to get up early!
I’m scrolling through my phone to look at all the adoptable dogs and cats at the animal shelters in the tri-county area because Patsy is in my past, and a cute four-legged friend is in my future.
This is the new, in-charge Jared Lochenko.
I may even install a dating app on my phone.