Boy Meets Geek Read Online Free PDF

of the shelf at Target or Walmart. Probably Walmart considering what the average college professor, even one with tenure, pulled these days. Not that I was judging or anything. I actually really liked her most of the time. She had a way of cutting through bullshit that only an older battle scarred prof who’d been through more than a few dances with undergrads could. Like right now as she stared down at us over her glasses.
    She didn’t look happy.
    “Ryan here seems to have a problem with genre fiction,” I said. “Such a big problem he can’t even follow the critique guidelines.”
    She looked down at Ryan and he actually looked down. One thing that could get him to shut up was a glance from professor Timms. Then again I had a feeling that a rampaging bull would probably stop and apologize if she fixed it with that glare. She was just that kind of professor. Fair, but very severe if she thought you were stepping out of line.
    “Is this true Ryan?”
    “She keeps writing this genre crap,” he muttered.
    Professor Timms arched an eyebrow. That was never a good sign. “Genre crap? Did you really just say that?”
    Ryan looked up and some of the anger he’d directed towards me was directed towards professor Timms. Only that anger seemed to crash over her like a wave slamming into a mountain for all the effect it had on her. She stared down at him tapping an irritated finger against her arm, the only sign other than an arched eyebrow that showed she was irritated and a sure sign that whatever student she was talking to needed to shut the hell up if they knew what was good for them. She had the unflappable calm demeanor of a woman who’d been teaching creative writing to artistic types for decades, and she’d seen everything at this point.
    Professor Timms turned to me. “And what do you think of this Jessica?”
    I was so angry. I was seeing red. I was starting to not care about consequences. I got that way when I got really angry. Like so angry that I saw stars dancing in front of my vision. Like how angry I was right now when I looked at Ryan’s smarmy face.
    I wasn’t going to launch myself across the table and smack him a couple of times like I wanted to, but I was going to lay into him.
    “I think if Ryan has a problem with something then he should probably follow the guidelines we were given for critiques at the beginning of the semester,” I said.
    A hint of a smile played across professor Timms’ face. “Such as?”
    I picked up Ryan’s story and flipped through it. I thought about looking at the notes I’d made. The red marks I’d jotted down while I was doing a proper critique. I noticed he had none of that on the stuff he printed out for my work.
    “Well he could come after me on technical grounds if he had a problem with the way I wrote. For example if I were to say something to him about craft then I might tell him that commas and dashes aren’t an appropriate replacement for proper punctuation. Or I might tell him that tossing an adverb after every line of dialogue is something that he probably should’ve gotten out of his writing system back when he was in middle school. I’m surprised that grumpy old Mrs. Ericson, the teacher with gray hair who was divorced and not exactly happy about teaching English at her age, didn’t beat that out of him back in the day.”
    His mouth opened and moved, but he didn’t say anything. I glanced up to professor Timms and her smile was growing wider. The tapping on her arm stopped. I figured that was all the permission I was going to get, so I kept going. I held up his story and waved it in the air.
    “Or if he was going to attack a story he could go after the substance. For example if I was to say something about his story then I might go on about how a story dripping with thinly concealed teenage angst isn’t exactly deep nor is the prose particularly literary. Unless playing fast and loose with punctuation like we mentioned earlier is your idea of