LEGACY ADMISSION Day 4

After Logic, I didn’t have another class, so I stayed behind to talk to the teacher. Typically, I could set aside a few hours in the library to figure things out, but Logic felt subjective, tangible, almost taffy-like. Arguments could be shifted and changed according to the speaker and listener and that wasn’t my strength. But I wasn’t the type to fall behind, ever. I gathered my things and waited in the short line to speak to him.

“Hey there, Ms. Poet,” said Deacon who’d sneaked up to stand behind me in line.

“What’s legacy mean?” I asked purposefully laying my southern accent on thick. It was something I’d witnessed my mother do to be intentionally underestimated. She was a master at it. It was my first try, but it seemed to work instantly since he turned bright red on his ears and nose and cheeks. Thinking of how he’d blatantly disrespected me the week before by reading my personal writings aloud, I continued. “I’m from the South and down there we don’t know much about practices of the north. Leg—a--cy?” I repeated the word, drawing out every syllable for drama.

The whole line turned to stare at him. He replied by stiffening his neck and walking out the door without getting a chance to speak with the professor.

When I turned around, I caught a few smiles and shrugged in response. Then, it was my turn, and there was just me and him left in the room. I parted my lips, and he spoke before I had a chance to.

“You don’t really speak with such an accent, do you?” he asked with an expression I couldn’t place. He could’ve been angry with me or delighted. His lips formed a slight frown, and his eyes were creased like Santa Clause’s jovial portrait during Christmas. It was a strange oxymoron of an expression that reminded me of the class he’d just taught. “You don’t have to answer that,” he said, his own Irish inflection less pronounced than before. “I see you… Your name, please?”

“Sophia,” I replied.

“Sophia, what?”

“Sophia Nobles,” I replied in my normal speaking voice. “From Irondale, Alabama.”

“Nobles. Did you attend Indian Springs for high school?” he asked, and I wanted to roll my eyes.

I was disappointed with his assumption that I’d gone through $70,000-per-year boarding school to Harvard pipeline. It shouldn’t have been something I’d need to explain—what side of the tracks I’d grown up on. I was a student just like every other in his class. I thought a moment about…

“Solipsism,” I said fingering through my notes from the day’s class. “The concept is ridiculous and self-important.”

He smirked, folded his arms, and leaned back on his desk. “More please, Ms. Nobles.”

“The thought that one’s singular thoughts should be the only ones in existence, and therefore, be the only ones considered is how Putin justifies nuclear war. It’s dangerous and stupid and destructive.”

“Vladimir Putin is a present-day relic,” he replied quickly. “He is not a name. He is but an easy term, a scapegoat if you will, to utilize in one’s argument. Replace him.”

I thought about it for a second. Staring at his flyaway hair which looked intentionally Einstein-esk. His weirdly shaped wire-rimmed glasses wanted badly to make the cover of philosophies version of Vogue. And his mining of the pasts of his current and former students stood alone as the worst of the stereotypes of Ivy Leagues. Of course, I laid my accent on thick and pretended to not know what legacy admission meant, but so did he. He probably grew up on an Irish homeschool farm same as me with a sheep named Pearl instead of a chicken named Annie.

I lifted my chin. “I can replace him with you then.”

He laughed in response. “Oh, yes?” he asked. “Please do.”

“Will there be penalties?” I asked him.

He unfolded his arms, held them out wide, and bowed. “There will not be. Speak freely.”

“You’re sizing me up,” I told him. “Just like you sized up Deacon and Rachel and every other student who raised their hands. You require unnecessary last names and high school names so you can place us. Rank us like cattle by accent and socioeconomic circumstance. This may well be because you’ve been teaching too long and this is the way of the Ivy, but it is also, in its way, solipsism. A tenured Logic professor gaging who will benefit his stature and curiosities by the last names of eighteen-year-old millionaires. You approach this class with yourself in mind, if I may remind you of your promise of zero consequences, as Vladimir Putin does for Mother Russia.”

He stared at the wooden floor for so long that it crossed my mind to apologize. Then, he spoke. “I see you,” he said. “And for the first time in twenty-seven-years of teaching at this school, a student has me clocked. Good work, Ms. Sophia from Irondale, Alabama.”

It was an exhilarating feeling—putting someone in their place in an intellectual way. But then…

“Why did you obliterate Mr. Deacon though?”

I went to speak and then decided not to. When it became obvious that I was not going to answer, he said. “You are excused from all work for the next month. Your secret assignment instead is to analyze yourself through the lens of Philosophy. What would possess you, a Southern young lady giving the intentional impressions of ignorance, to bring a student like Deacon the legacy to tears? I want ten-pages by the end of September. Have a good day, Ms. Sophia Nobles. And I look forward to your paper.”

“But I had a few questions about today’s lesson,” I said.

“Your questions will be answered by yourself,” he said back. “Besides, you wouldn’t want the opinions of a professor who has been professing too long, now would you?”

My exhilarating feeling of standing up for myself was immediately replaced by an endless pit in my stomach filled with regret and stupidity.