Educated

“Then go talk to your algebra professor,” he said. “You’re failing. Ask for
help.”
It had never occurred to me to talk to a professor—I didn’t realize we were
allowed to talk to them—so I decided to try, if only to prove to Charles I
could do it.
I knocked on his office door a few days before Thanksgiving. He looked
smaller in his office than he did in the lecture hall, and more shiny: the light
above his desk reflected off his head and glasses. He was shuffling through
the papers on his desk, and he didn’t look up when I sat down. “If I fail this
class,” I said, “I’ll lose my scholarship.” I didn’t explain that without a
scholarship, I couldn’t come back.
“I’m sorry,” he said, barely looking at me. “But this is a tough school. It
might be better if you come back when you’re older. Or transfer.”
I didn’t know what he meant by “transfer,” so I said nothing. I stood to go,
and for some reason this softened him. “Truthfully,” he said, “a lot of people
are failing.” He sat back in his chair. “How about this: the final covers all the
material from the semester. I’ll announce in class that anyone who gets a
perfect score on the final—not a ninety-eight but an actual one hundred—will
get an A, no matter how they performed on the midterm. Sound good?”
I said it did. It was a long shot, but I was the queen of long shots. I called
Charles. I told him I was coming to Idaho for Thanksgiving and I needed an
algebra tutor. He said he would meet me at Buck’s Peak.