Written by: Zoe Vedova, Humour Editor
The TA had snapped.
“So, obviously no one did the readings. Again.”
Her voice was slick as ice, creaking under the uncountable pressures of being a grad student in charge of a tutorial for a prof who never answers opinion.
Seven of the 15 kids who were supposed to attend the tutorial glanced up from their phones, ready to atone for their lack of participation with an apologetic smile. Their guilty expressions immediately fell when they realized their TA had stood — no, was levitating above her table. The five glowing gems of the Infinity Gauntlet washed her face in ghoulish neon light; where she acquired the most powerful weapon in the nine realms was impossible to say.
“Someone,” she screamed, and brandished the weapon, firing energy beams straight through the ceiling at will. “Get this week’s reading out and tell me what Habermas’s theory of the public sphere was RIGHT NOW!”
The class scrambled away, shrieking and cowering under tables as flaming bits of West Mall’s mouldy ceiling tiles crashed down around them. One student attempted to escape.
“Am I a joke to you?” The TA demanded to know. Glove raised, she created a portal right underneath the door into which the student vanished without a sound.
Another student, shaking, attempted to download the PDF file off Canvas. The TA swung around and a red laser obliterated the laptop. In the laptop’s place, Prussian social philosopher Jürgen Habermas appeared. The old man proceeded to stumble into a wall and then break out sobbing.
A third student, on their hands and knees, cried. “I- we’re, we’re sorry!”
“We’re sorry! We’re sorry,” feverishly repeated the remaining students. “We’ll do the readings, God, please spare us!”
The Mad Titan TA looked down. “It’s not your fault. I marked your term papers. I know how stupid you are. The world has too many stupid students anyway and for some reason it’s my glorious job to fix it.”
With a snap of the gauntlet, the TA disappeared. The student on his knees instantly burst into a cloud of dust, strikingly similar to the ephemeral remnants of asbestos still lurking about the ceilings of Burnaby campus. Presumably, all the students not in attendance that day simultaneously became dust, too.
***
“I’m sorry, your TA turned into . . .Thanos?” My academic advisor asks.
“Yes!” I shout, nearly out of breath from the story. “Just this morning! I can’t go back.”
He looks back at his computer, unconvinced. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t an overridable department policy. I can’t let you switch tutorials.”
