The Accent

Ch 23 - The Weekend (Part 1)

Chapter 23 - The Weekend (Part 1)

Dealing with the aftermath of that letter was worse than actually receiving it.

The following few days took away any hope I had of staying in America. After feeling sorry for myself for a whole night I had decided that I wasn't accepting this, they couldn't just kick me off my course with a barely plausible explanation.

I stormed to the admin office the next day like a woman on a mission, I was full of optimism and determination, I'd only been at the university for three months, they couldn't just get rid of me because of one assignment surely?

Apparently they could.

From having an hour long talk with the head receptionist, I'd been shown that those were in fact the conditions of my contract, still not accepting it I went to see Professor Andrews.

As you can imagine he was very helpful, not.

Professor Andrews was just as much help as expected. The only thing I learnt from that conversation was to remember for future references to not to piss off the very influential members of the faculty.

They have the ability to fuck your life up.

Each encounter left me feeling disheartened and downtrodden, after seeing the woman in admin and Professor Andrews, I only had one scrap of hope by this point.

Dr. Linda Carmichael, Head of Engineering.

I slammed the door to Professor Andrews office shut, feeling my eyes fill up with unwanted tears. My professionalism, intelligence and my accomplishments had all been insulted more than once by that man in the space of twenty minutes.

It hurt to know that a respected -by most people- Professor thought that I was worthless and that I wasn't clever enough or skilled enough to make it in this industry, he was the tenured lecturer who knew what he was talking about.

I had to take his word for it.

Wiping away the few tears that had managed to escape, I walked towards Dr. Carmichael's office. She was my last chance, hopefully she could shed some light onto how this could be happening because of only one slipped grade.

Knocking softly on the door I popped my head in after hearing the muffled 'come in' from the other side, sat behind a large mahogany desk was a woman shuffling through some papers on the top of the desk.

Eyes behind thin framed glasses flicked up to me, her long brunette hair was pulled into a very tight high ponytail, she sat in a black leather chair, back straighter than a poker. Not a hair was out of place, a crinkle did not dare to form on her navy skirt suit.

Her whole persona screamed sharp and in control.

"Hi, I'm Violet Thompson, I was wondering if I could talk to you about a letter that I recently received?" I said nervously, still standing half in half out of the room, clutching the door for support.

The lady, which the door informed me was Dr. Carmichael, sighed and nodded her affirmation.

I entered the room and shut the door softly behind me, she took her glasses off and waved for me to sit in the chair opposite her.

Feeling slightly intimidated by her pristine office and appearance, I made a conscious effort to sit up straighter in attempts to look as put together as she did, I was probably failing badly at that too.

I dug in my bag for the letter that had changed my life and straightened the now crumpled paper flat on her desk, she eyed it with tired eyes and pursed lips.