Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 95627 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 478(@200wpm)___ 383(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95627 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 478(@200wpm)___ 383(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
"I'm sorry, professor. You have my full attention. It won't happen again."
He pursed his lips as he glared down at me, and I felt about three inches tall.
"Tell me why I shouldn't just throw you out of this class."
"I—" I started to answer him, but then he kept talking and I realized it was a rhetorical question.
"Every other student in this class has had to earn their space. None of these students have community college courses on their resume, as if that were somehow good enough. Or even relevant.”
No one else here had to pull strings to get transferred mid-semester.
“I have no idea how you got into this class." He looked at the guy next to me and stage-whispered, "But I think we all have a few ideas."
Giggles erupted around me.
My cheeks burned.
"But regardless, you are here. If you are to be in my class, I expect you to apply yourself and meet my expectations as if you earned your space honorably.”
The vein in his forehead pulsed.
More people around us erupted into barely stifled giggles.
Hot, angry tears burned behind my eyes, but I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.
"I did not—"
"Don't waste any more of my time or yours by lying. It is irrelevant how you got here, but you will do the work.
“You will show up and you will figure out how to raise your diminished intelligence and intellect into something that I can at least tolerate calling a student."
I clenched my jaw until it ached.
I said nothing.
There was a torrent of profanity-laced insults behind my teeth, but I couldn't let them fly.
I couldn't tell this pompous asshole that no, I did not get here because I fucked my way to the middle.
I couldn't tell him that if I was fucking my way into a class, I would have actually done my research and been placed with a better professor.
And I absolutely could not have pointed out that I was the only one in this room who had actually earned a spot and who had actually worked for it instead of having their daddy pay a bribe to Admissions.
I had applied to this school while I was in high school and was approved for early admission.
I was more deserving of this spot than every other person here.
The only reason I wasn't able to go was because at the time I couldn't afford the tuition.
Unlike the others here, I wasn't born with a silver spoon shoved up my ass.
I wanted to tell the self-righteous son of a bitch exactly where he could take his outdated reading material and his narcissistic insistence that everyone in this class buy his book just so he could get the royalties.
I would've loved to point out the hypocrisy of having such a misogynistic douchebag teach International Contract Ethics.
But I didn't.
With the strength only women possess, I held my rage back.
I refused to let even a single hot tear fall down my cheek as I condensed that rage and stored it for later.
It was going to fuel every late-night study session I had.
If I told this professor exactly what I thought of him, his class, and all the other entitled students here, then they would win.
I'd be kicked out so fast my head would spin and there wasn't enough money in the world for Artem to buy my way back in.
This degree was going to be my ticket to freedom.
Or at least part of it.
Until I got it, I'd have to sit here and suffer through this bullshit, proving my strength time and time again.
It was something Dima taught me.
It was what separated us from the rest of our family.
The Zaitsevs were known for their rage.
It burned hot, and my father and other brother would lash out with a violence that scared most people.
They weren't the scary ones, though.
They were predictable in their anger, their rage.
Dima and I were different.
We had that same rage.
We just knew how to control it.
How to funnel that energy into something more productive.
For Dima, it meant holding on to anger until its use was strategically beneficial, whether that meant letting it explode in violence or fuel a revenge tactic, depending on the situation.
For me, it meant spite.
I was going to pass this class.
I was going to make it absolutely impossible for this son of a bitch to fail me.
Every single night would be spent reading over all the materials, going over lectures even if I had to do it all myself until my new study group met.
I was going to do it all, and I was going to do it on my own because fuck this professor.
Fuck him for underestimating me and thinking that I was less worthy because I came from an immigrant family, because I had a community college education, or because he couldn't figure out how to pronounce my name.