The oak podium in Lecture Hall B was older than the university’s modern charter, its dark grain worn smooth by the nervous palms of two centuries of scholars. A faint scent of lemon oil and old paper clung to the wood, a smell I had come to associate with accountability rather than fear.
I stood behind it, adjusting the microphone until the flexible neck clicked into place.
My dissertation sat before me in a black leather binder: Reconstructing the Hearth: Agency, Consent, and the Legacies of Familial Coercion in Nineteenth-Century Literature. Three hundred and forty pages. Four years of research. A lifetime of processing.
The committee sat elevated on the dais across from me. Professor Chen sat in the center, her spectacles perched on her nose, looking equal parts proud and formidable.
