It was 7:30 by the time I got back to my apartment, something my roommate Ellen clocked immediately, "dude, you're like 45 minutes late, what happened?" She asked, cross legged on the living room couch.

"I argued with my professor about my grade." I huffed out, having only just made my way through the door.

"Rosieeeeeeeeeeee!" She shouted, "Are you serious? It's only been two real weeks back in classes and you're already arguing about the integrity of your writing?"

"Oh don't worry, it gets worse," I assured her as I collapsed on the couch next to her, "it was with Professor Reid."

"Are you insane?!" Ellen shouted out, nearly pushing me off the couch with the force she shoved my shoulder with. While Professor Reid was known to be kind, his reputation on campus for being a tough grader extended beyond just the psych and criminology departments, if even a special education major like Ellen knew about it. "Why would you even bother?"

"Because it was bullshit Ellen! He wasn't giving me feedback on my understanding of the material, he just doesn't like that I dared question the reliability of criminal profiling as a science. It's one thing when it comes from an expert like him, but dumbass deputies at county sheriff's offices with six months of combat training try to replicate these methods and chronically arrest the wrong people. Over reliance of the methods he teaches just creates blind spots in investigative work, and he's just insulted that I pointed that out!" It all came out like word vomit, faster and angrier than I had intended.

"Oh my God, did you say all that?" Ellen asked, clearly trying to not sound amused.

"Well not exactly like that, no, but the part that matters yes! That I felt he let himself get biased by the perspective of the work rather than engage with the work itself." I responded, coming back down from my anger again and feeling my anxiety creep back up. "Oh GOD, Ellen what do I do? We got cut off mid-convo and I agreed to 'finish the conversation' during his office hours on friday." I moaned into my own hands.

"You either stand your ground or grovel for forgiveness, but you have to pick one and stick with it, playing both sides of the field won't help you." Ellen responded as she hopped up from the couch to pour us each a glass of wine from the kitchen. I sighed and leaned back against the couch, staring at the ceiling like it would reveal the right path to me.

"He did say I could rewrite the whole thing if I was that upset about it," I said, "maybe that is the way to go, just apologize, beg and plead." I gladly took the glass of red wine from Ellen as she sat back down next to me.

"I don't know if 'begging and pleading' are strictly necessary, ultimately all you did was stand up for your perspective." She said before catching my slightly embarrassed face. "ROSIE, what else did you SAY?"

"I might have mildly accused him of sexism in an effort to prove my point about blind spots in profiling." I responded, trying to sound as innocent as possible.

"Haha, no dude you definitely need to go the groveling route I'm so sorry." Ellen finally laughed out. "He also is in charge of your grade for the next twelve weeks too, you need him to not hate you."

I sighed in exasperation, she's right. I know she's right. "Ok, well then I guess that's an exnay on getting wine drunk and binging Columbo, tonight if I have a whole paper to re-write." I said.

"No! Absolutely not!" Ellen said as she picked up the bottle of wine began to pour more into my almost empty glass. "If you're groveling, do it right, appeal to his sense of authority and ask him to help you re-write the paper." She chirped out.

"Ha! That's not a bad idea, where did you come up with that?"

"From listening to you ramble about this man's last two lectures! I'm also pushing for apologizing for your own happiness, despite all your critiques you clearly love this class, you should stay excited about it." Ellen insisted before pulling up Peacock. "Now, we are on season four!"