Seminar room smells like old paper and desperation. Aris is talking about hegemony again. Big surprise. My phone is vibrating against my inner thigh. Mama called four times from the village. *Did you finish the visa forms? Is the air conditioning making you sick?* I ignore it. I’m a bad daughter. A bad student. Just a bad person overall. Sweating through my shirt while everyone else looks like they stepped out of a goddamn New Yorker ad. Phone under the table. Wedged between my knees like a dirty secret. Screen brightness all the way down so the glow doesn't catch on my glasses. I’m refreshing the feed. Some pop star just got caught doing coke in a bathroom stall. Refresh. Her hair looks like shit. Refresh. Why am I doing this? I have 50 pages of theory due and I’m tracking the flight path of a private jet belonging to a man who probably thinks Africa is a country. Fucking pathetic. "The subaltern cannot speak," Aris says. I want to tell him the subaltern is currently looking at a photo of a C-list actor’s botched Botox. I’m supposed to be the pride of the family. The one who got the scholarship. The big brain. Instead, I’m a fucking parasite. I’m a bottom-feeder. I’m looking at the comment section of a gossip rag to drown out the sound of my own heartbeat. It’s loud. It’s too fucking loud.