Stalk her: her calculus professor - 8. Her TA is there too

Categorically, Meg’s worst grades were in Calculus. She absolutely should have taken something different (something easier) to fulfill her math requirement, but she was stuck here for the quarter and she just had to get through it. Her professor, Dr. Nielsen, was a tough woman: tall, willowy, blonde, all around gorgeous, and clearly one of the greatest mathematical minds of her generation. That she was stuck teaching introductory calculus was basically an insult. But that’s what happens to junior faculty, and she couldn’t have been much over 30.

After the midterm, Meg found her way to Dr. Nielsen’s office hours, hoping to talk about her grade. She hadn’t bombed, but she’d been one of high school’s top students and to her a C was basically failing. As she went to knock on her professor’s office door, she heard two voices inside. One was her professor, but the other sounded like her TA for the class, Simon Rios. He was an exchange student from South America somewhere and looked every part the latin lover.

Tentatively, she knocked on the door. The conversation stopped and an annoyed Dr. Nielsen responded “Come in.”

Meg saw that the two of them had been discussing something on the office chalkboard. Whatever it was, it was way beyond her mathematical knowledge. She knew Simon was one of Dr. Nielsen’s honors advisees; this must be part of his thesis.

“Um, hi, I’m sorry, this is office hours, right?”

“It is, yes, are you another one here about your midterm grade?” Dr. Nielsen was clearly unhappy at the interruption.

“Should I come back later?”

“No it’s fine, you’re here now.” Dr. Nielsen went over to her gradebook and scanned for Meg’s name. “You only got a C, are you here to dispute or to ask about something else?”

“No, no. I mean I’m sure you did the grades right, you’re a math professor after all,” Dr. Nielsen didn’t smile at Meg’s feeble attempt at a joke/compliment but she kept going, “no I just… I guess I was wondering if there was anything I could do to get my grades up?”

“Study harder for the final? Simon has study sessions you can go to too.”

“Totally, and I will do those things! I guess I was just wondering if there was extra credit.”