"Cluster analysis are used to find groups within the data. These clusters share common characteristics. Clusters are made of points, which can be similar or dissimilar within or between clusters..."
Melody frowns as she types the last sentence. She wants to use different words but can't find them without sounding inaccurate. She sighs deeply and takes a sip from her ice coffee that's starting to drip condensation onto the table. She picks at her thumb impatiently, wracking her brain for synonyms. She sets her coffee down and readjusts on the swiveling chair, a luxurious find at her university's library.
She had just finished attending her neuroscience class and roughly has an hour break before the lab opens for students. She decided that rather than going back to her apartment, she would force herself to work at the library so that she would (hopefully) be more motivated to make progress with her final assignments. It has barely been thirty minutes and Melody is ready to throw her laptop straight across the first floor. None of her codes for her statistics class were running and she was growing frustrated, answering the assignment questions as best she could, trying to ignore the bright red error pop-ups that glows on her screen unsympathetically. She takes a deep breath, and exhales slowly, switching back and forth between the lecture slides and her assignments, meticulously scanning her lines to see where she mistyped.
Once. Twice. Three times.
It's useless. She scowls at her screen, punches several keys on her keyboard to save her work and angrily exits the coding program. Fuck it, it wasn't due until next week anyways.
She goes to her class homepage and clicks on "Behavioral Neuroscience". She taps her fingers against the motherboard, waiting for the page to load. She takes another drink of her coffee, her frustration slowly seeping away from her body with every sip. She navigates the page until she reaches the study guide. She opens the document and immediately her mouth dropped.
Firstly, it was fourteen pages. Secondly, every inch of it was filled with terms, questions, and diagrams.
This has got to be a goddamn fucking joke,
she thinks to herself as she slowly scans each page. The content wasn't unfamiliar, as she recognizes some concepts that were taught earlier on in the semester. But for the majority of the questions, they were specific, and requires her to look back on her notes to answer them correctly. She half wanted to pinch herself on the arm. There was absolutely zero chance of her retaining any of this information before her lab practical that was coming up in two days.
Whoever teaches this class, it better not be who I think is
She zooms back up to the top of the document, where it reads in grey text in the header "NEU 385, Alexander".
Huh. Interesting
.
She shoots up from her chair and yanks her charger from the charger port. She snaps her laptop closed and shoves it in her backpack along with her charger and pencil case. She swings the backpack over her shoulder and storms to the library doors.
Oh, he's going to get an earful of this when lab comes. Fourteen fucking pages, my ass!
Melody half runs to the health and science wing and swings open the door with such force that it nearly hit the nearby students as they exit. She stomps up the stairs, and continues her rampage down the hall, until she reaches the second to last door of the hall on the right. She was about to swing open another door when she suddenly froze. Through the narrow rectangular window, Melody can see there were already students sat amongst the three lab benches; some on their phones, some immersed in animated conversations.
All of her anger dissipated in a flash. She hovered her hand over the doorknob only to lower it. She felt silly, slightly shameful. She was about to enter the laboratory, guns and blazing, demanding an explanation from Professor Alexander as to why he made an exhaustive study guide in front of her classmates. If there's one thing Melody hates the most, it's public humiliation and holding a bad reputation. Even though it was nearing the end of the semester, it was only the first semester of the year. She had already signed up for classes next year and knew some students in this class that was going to be in her upcoming classes in the winter. The last thing she needed was a nickname.
Melody sighs and opens the laboratory door with significantly less power than she intended. A couple of heads pops up to see who came through the doors only to lower back down. She put her backpack in one of the cubbies and takes out her notebook that contained all of her notes and a diagram textbook of the brain.
"...and that's why you should always label your specimens. I drank simulated cerebrospinal fluid once accidentally, thinking it was water," Professor Alexander's voice floats through the classroom as Melody makes her way to the nearest lab bench. He's sat on his desk at the front of the lab, taking a swig from his water bottle. Behind him was a whiteboard covered with a sagittal cut of the entire brain with multiple arrows strewn across the board. Ironically, there was also a large sticker that displayed all the lab rules on the board as well.
"Professor.... are you not supposed to drink nor eat in the lab...?" a student's voice shyly asks.
The hesitance in his voice was clear as day.
Professor Alexander takes another swig from his water bottle. "Yes, but I'm also thirsty. Talking for three hours straight isn't going to help me get my thirst quenched."
"Are you wearing.... hoodie and sweatpants...?" another student skeptically ask.
Professor Alexander grins widely at the student, mischief gleaming in his eyes. "Another rhetorical question. Yes, Emily, I am. Because although opening the lab to undergraduate students on a twenty-four-hour basis might have been productive for you all, I have no doubt that I would come to find, the next morning, the entire building burnt down for unspecified reasons." He takes another drink from his water bottle and opens a granola bar. "So, I have generously decided to supervise the lab until it closes. Believe it or not, a suit is not the most comfortable thing to be in, especially late at night and in a lab, no less. Also, if you're going to eat something, which I highly recommend you do, please do so outside."
"Then...why are you eating inside the lab?"
Melody could almost feel his arrogance spread through the room.
"Because I can."
He takes a bite of his granola bar, chews it and swallows it all while staring daggers at the student. He leans in towards her direction.
"If you're thinking about being a snitch, I'm a tenured professor and have made significant research contributions to the university. You can't fire me."
The class suddenly fills with chortles and laughter. Melody raises her eyebrows in shock. Professor Alexander always seemed so cold and rigid. From the way he dressed to the way he taught the class, every move, every word was intentional; it had a purpose. This was the first time Melody saw him show a glimmer of what lay beneath his cold exterior.
"Okay, enough questions about me," Professor Alexander swings down from the table and scrunches up the granola bar wrapper. "Use this time wisely, as well as the resources around you such as your peers and the textbooks available. I'll be coming around to see if you have any questions." Melody subtly rolls her eyes and opens her laptop to the study guide while flipping through the diagram filled textbook to correlate the question with. The sound of papers shuffling and metal tools clinking against each other fills the lab as the class starts to review their dissections.
Time passes by quickly, as Melody steadily makes her way through the study guide. By the time five o'clock hit she had already answered at least a third of all the questions and defined all the terms. Professor Alexander makes his rounds, occasionally calling the class to pay attention to the board as he explained a neural pathway or a function of a specific cell. Students came and went as the hours passed, some packing up for good and headed home, whereas others took breaks, often in pairs of small groups, taking the time to eat together.
Melody, on the other hand, was concentrated on finishing her review guide. Several times she was asked by her classmates if she wanted to join them on their breaks, and several times she politely declined. She knew that if she knocked out this study guide tonight, she would have significantly less to worry about in the upcoming week, which she already anticipated to have more pressure than Satan's cesspool.
What felt like an eternity later, Melody finally looks up from her brain dissection, unable to take the smell of formaldehyde any longer, only to find an empty classroom. The last student was packing his bag and with a wan smile to her and a 'thank you, professor', he was gone. Professor Alexander is by the whiteboard, erasing the copious amounts of diagrams strewn across like graffiti. Melody exhales, massaging her temples. She had spent the past four and a half hours continuously tackling the study guide, she didn't realize she started to develop a hunger headache. She feels lightheaded and there was a pulsating ache at the back of eyes from staring at her computer screen for too long. She put her dissection back into the jar and takes her dissection tray to the basin to wash it with special cleaning solution.
As she was washing her tray and scalpel, she caught a glimpse of Professor Alexander through the reflection of the black stone backsplash. His hair was messy, as if he ran his hands through them one too many times, flopping into his face. As he lifts his arms up, she could she just the slightest hint of his boxer briefs peaking from underneath his sweatpants. A blush slowly crept up Melody's face. She had never seen him in casual clothing, he almost looks more attractive in then. His hoodie was taut against his arms, outlining his muscles. She follows his body down and could just make out his bulge in his sweatpants, further reddening her face. He looks over to the sink area where she stands, and slightly cocks his head to one side. She quickly looks down, cleaning the last of her dissection tools and heads back to her bench. She begins to pack up her textbook when her peripheral view picks up a figure on her left side. She turns and Professor Alexander was standing over her, with a container of food. He pulls out a chair besides her and sits down. He places the container in front of her with a spoon carefully wrapped in a napkin.
"Eat."
Melody looks up at his face. His eyes were like moss trapped in glass, filled with care and concern. She shakes her head and starts to push the container back to him.
