I Spent 8 Hours at Teaching Assistant Training

The oddest thing happened this morning. I was sitting in an auditorium for a TA training seminar, as is required for all new TAs. The organizers had been kind enough to provide muffins and croissants, and I was reasonably content.

There was a subtle rumble in my stomach just minutes into the Dean of Graduate Students' lengthy, broad, evenly paced, heartfelt, introduction, which I attributed to the cheep beer I'd indulged in last night.

The rumble intensified and concentrated itself just below my ribcage. It became more of a tapping as the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies flagrantly plagiarized the Dean in her own welcoming speech, and it felt as if someone or something was testing the structural integrity of my abdomen. I would have been concerned if I wasn't so engrossed in the stitching on my shoes at the time.

It was a jailbreak! Something within me was attempting to burrow its way out of my torso. Something crushed, claustrophobic, was trying to get out. My soul was trying to escape.

This simply wouldn't do. Dented and smudged though it might be, I need my soul... or at least I will the next time I cross the threshold of a church or try to sing Aretha Franklin.

I tried to use my hands to clam the abdominal wall shut, but the soul is actually rather fluid and it squeezed between my fingers. My soul had escaped, and was slithering away.

Leaping from my chair, I scattered the Italian Literature grads and knocked a Music Theorist over. My soul, now trapped between the carpeted floor and my cupped hands, bit me, taking a chunk of the flesh between the right thumb and forefinger.

I should have been embarrassed, having suffered the ignominy of being bitten by a fugitive soul. Instead, I just couldn't seem to care... about anything... at all. Nursing my bleeding hand, I watched my soul dip its taped fists in tar and broken glass.

It was at this point that I realized that it might have been better if I'd simply let the soul go, because "Chain of Fools" isn't that great a song and this was going to hurt.

My soul connected with a left hook that broke my nose. A representative of the General Counsel's Office was giving a not-so-brief history of the General Counsel's Office. My soul kicked me in the ribs; it was angry and playing for keeps. I threw myself at my soul's ankles, hoping to throw it off balance or at least interrupt the flurry of punches that were landing on my face.

All of a sudden, my soul took my arm and twisted it sharply. The world turned white hot, and the shoulder was about to be ripped from its socket. I was slipping into blissful unconsciousness but was vaguely aware that my soul's escape was inevitable, that by the end of this TA training session my soul would be gone forever.

Thank god for the coffee break between lectures. Smelling the dark-roasted percolation, my soul was happy enough to climb back in and soak in the caffeiney-goodness. With my soul firmly reattached to the heart-bone, I spent the following seven hours being informed that it is bad to have sex with one's students.