Miseducation

Oxytocin

As I walked down the long hallway of Johnson Tower, my backpack slung over one shoulder and threatening to pull me to the ground with the sheer weight of my textbooks, I thought about the Nokia flip phone I'd had in high school and the day I dropped it in an intersection. The phone had been run over by at least three cars and, when I'd darted back to retrieve it, it somehow still worked, but it was cracked and dented and looked like something from a scrap metal dump. That was precisely how I felt that afternoon — like a crushed Nokia, barely functioning and decidedly mauled to shit.

I'd finally gotten my exam grades back, and I'd done alright — not as good as I'd hoped, but not awful — in all but one class. Adult Psychopathology.

I brought my fist to the office door, pounding on it with all of the pent-up fury I'd been harbouring since Friday, and waited for an answer.

"Knock a little harder, maybe?" A familiar voice called through the thick wood, causing me to still mid-knock. The door swung open and Adelaide scooted back in her chair, returning to the laptop in front of her.

"Adelaide?"

"Who else?"

"I was looking for —"

"Professor Stevens, I'm assuming. She's sick." She rolled her eyes, indicating that the older woman probably wasn't sick at all, "Convenient, right? I have to finish marking ten sections of exams by tomorrow night."

"Jesus," I breathed, staring at the teetering stack of papers, "I had a few questions about the midterm, but I'm starting to think they can wait."

She took a deep breath and shut the laptop, giving me her full attention. "No," She comforted me, "Don't worry about it, I needed a break anyway."

"Is talking about the exam really a break, though?" I raised an eyebrow and she shook her head, a weak smile playing out across her lips.

"I'll take what I can get," She sighed, "So what did you have a hard time with?"

"Um," I leaned against the doorframe, having totally forgotten what I'd come here for in the first place, "Fuck, I forgot."

She picked up a test from the desk and tossed it to me wordlessly.

"Are you allowed to show me other people's exams?"

"No," She chuckled, "Don't tell anybody."

"My lips are sealed," I grinned, before scanning through the test. "Oh! 35 and 36! They're about —"

"Genetic markers," She offered, "I should know, so far only about fifty students got those questions right."

"That makes me feel a little bit better," I looked at the ground, "But still. I'm confused."

"The first one is MAOA-L."

I looked at her blankly and she continued, "Low activity monoamine oxidase A. The warrior gene. It's a genetic marker for aggression and antisocial behaviour due to it's role in the encoding of MAO-A, the enzyme that catalyzes the oxidative deamination of neurotransmitters. It's associated with decreased surface area in the right basolateral amygdala nucleus and increased surface area in the right anterior cortical amygdaloid nucleus."

"Did we even study that in class?" I choked, holding the booklet close to my chest.

"Yes, Elsie," She groaned, "We even talked about it a few weeks ago. The next one asks about reticulon 4. It produces a neurite outgrowth inhibitor and is linked with demyelinating disease and pedophilia, and recent studies have suggested a correlation between RTN4 and schizophrenia. That's the answer."