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Ash runs over a mental list of all the advice he's been given about his first day of teaching.
Be honest with the kids, but don't let them know this is your first year as a professor. Keep your pedagogy courses in mind, but be adaptable to new information. Don't be stuck in your ways, but don't be a pushover either.
He feels like that list leaves him at about net zero, but there's not much he can do about it at this point.
He's only teaching one course this semester, and he has a student TA to help out. And it's not a new course or anything, either—the curriculum is pretty well established. ENG 100. He just has to ... teach it.
Breathe, Ash, he tells himself. You've done your student teaching courses. You'll be fine. They're just teenagers.
God, there's nothing on Earth scarier than teenagers. Ash would know. He remembers.
Part of him wishes he was starting out teaching a graduate level course instead. He's led seminars and presentations with peers his own age. He's still anxious in those moments, of course, but at least he can be a little more casual. He knows what to expect. But teenagers? University freshmen? That's a mixed bag, or a few of them.
Tapping absentmindedly on his desk in the office he shares with several other professors, Ash tries to think back to his first college experiences. It was a bit different for him, of course—he had learned most of what the professors tried to teach him from books or from Dino's private tutors, and he never set foot in a high school. But there was still an element of the fear of the unknown, similar to what several of his students are probably feeling now. He's teaching freshmen—not jaded students who are established in their cynicism and lack of studying, but students who are just starting out in university. Students who aren't sure where to go from here. Students who might—just might—be looking to him for help.
And isn't that terrifying?
He looks over his own syllabus for the course, which lays out what each and every class period will cover—allowing room for adjustment, of course. Today will mainly just be going over the syllabus with the students so they know what to expect from the rest of the class. The grading scale, the attendance policy. How the distribution of points will work out, and which assignments will be worth more. But some of these students will never have seen a college syllabus in their lives, so Ash will need to be prepared to explain it from scratch.
God, why didn't he pay more attention in his student teaching classes? Suddenly he feels like he can't remember anything from any moment he's ever been in a classroom, as a teacher or as a student. And when he glances at the clock on his desktop computer, he only has a few minutes before he needs to get going.
He's so screwed. He's going to be fired and banned from teaching forever on his first day. Why did he think he could possibly ever work with kids? With teenagers? Isn't that, like, the opposite of what Ash should be doing, in every single way?
Though he's running out of time, Ash quickly opens the notes app on his phone and looks at the journal his therapist is having him keep. He scrolls back a few days, to when he was having almost this exact same anxiety but with more time to figure it out.
But isn't the fact that I'm worried about it a good sign, really? the Ash from a few days ago had written. If I planned to hurt the kids, or even wanted to in any way, I wouldn't be nearly as afraid of doing so. I can't exactly imagine Marvin or any of the others being eaten up with guilt about their actions. Definitely not until they were done satisfying themselves, at the very least.
He's tried not to limit what he says in these journals, and to let them get as cynical or as hopeful as his mind allows. Still, without any intentional restrictions of his own, he's noticed that his tone in his journaling has become less vulgar over time. Almost like he's getting better, or something.
He takes a few breaths, here in the present. See? he thinks. This is a good sign, not a bad one. You'll be okay. This is what you've been waiting for.
Still, a call to Eiji on the way to the classroom can't hurt.
He grabs his phone out of his pocket as he stands, dialing the number because he has it memorized and he knows he types it faster than he can search through his contacts.
Eiji picks up on the first ring.
"What's wrong?" Eiji's voice comes through strong and clear as soon as the ringback tone ends. "You should be in class, right? Did something happen?" He doesn't sound panicked, and his concern is almost reassuring to Ash, in an odd way.
"I'm fine," Ash breathes into the phone. "I'm on my way to the classroom now. Walking across campus. Needed to calm my nerves, I guess."
"Oh," Eiji says, relief and a hint of laughter in his voice. "Oh, my love. Okay. I am glad." Over the years, Eiji's speech has become more casual as well—more natural, less stiff than when he first set foot in the States. But occasionally the formalities of being an ESL speaker still show through, like now with his I am glad, and Ash's heart fills with fondness at the familiarity. He loves Eiji. Everything about Eiji.
"Teenagers are just—scary, you know?" Ash admits.
Eiji laughs, more free now, less worried. "They're more afraid of you than you are of them," he teases.
"I'm serious, Eiji!" Ash whines. "I remember what being that age was like. I remember the shit I was doing at eighteen. I don't wanna be anywhere near that mess."
"You were not exactly the standard, especially among rich college kids."
Ash breathes out a sigh. "I know," he admits. "I know it's different. But I'm scared." He lets his voice quiet, a bit more vulnerability in his next words: "I don't want to hurt anyone."
Eiji hums, ever so softly, into the phone's microphone. "You won't. You'll be a fantastic professor, Ash, and more importantly—a fantastic teacher, in more ways than one."
"Really?" Ash asks gently. The building is in sight, and he's narrowing in on his destination. He's less afraid than before.
"I mean it. I give my word. You're going to make a difference in people's lives. A positive difference in the lives of those around you."
"That's all I want," Ash admits. "That's all I could ever want."
"That's all you've ever done," Eiji responds. Like it's easy.
Ash loves him.
He taps a fingernail on the back of his phone. "I gotta take off, love, I can't be late on the first day."
"I understand. You'll do well, okay? I believe in you. Knock them dead." There's a short pause. "But not—not actually, of course. In terms of doing so well at your job that they will be left—"
Ash interrupts with a laugh, loud and true and echoing down the hallway as he approaches his classroom. "Yes, I get it. Don't worry. I probably taught you that idiom, after all."
"I must have been so concerned the first time," Eiji mutters.
Ash spares another moment to smile into his phone. "Love you forever," he says.
"Love you always," Eiji responds.
With a great amount of self-control, Ash hangs up the phone. Then, before he gives himself a chance to second guess the decision, he reaches for the door to his first class.
Come on, Ash, he tells himself. Professor Callenreese. Let's change lives.