CoCo Lovelock: My First Anal Trip!

Coco has a math problem she needs help with: if teacher-student relationships are so frowned upon, why do so many girls crush on their professors? Coco needs her professor’s help getting to the, er, bottom of this one.

The differential equations worksheet lay on the table between them, covered in Coco’s increasingly desperate scribbles. She’d been staring at problem seven for forty-five minutes, and the symbols on the page had stopped looking like math and started looking like ancient hieroglyphics. Across from her, Professor Chen waited patiently, his expression warm but not giving anything away.

“Walk me through your thinking,” he said, as he’d said a dozen times during their office hour sessions. “Where did you get stuck?”

Coco took a deep breath and tried to articulate the chaos in her head. “I understood it when we covered it in lecture. I really did. I took notes, I followed along, it all made sense. But then I got to my dorm and opened the textbook and it was like…” She gestured vaguely at her own confusion. “Like someone had replaced my brain with cotton candy.”

Professor Chen smiled—that small, kind smile that had made him the most popular professor in the mathematics department. “That’s actually quite common. Lecture understanding and problem-solving understanding are two different skills. The first is passive, the second is active. You’re not failing at math, Coco. You’re just in the uncomfortable space between knowing and doing.”

“Uncomfortable is one word for it.” She slumped back in her chair, frustrated. “I’ve been here for two hours. My roommate texted to ask if I’d died. I’m starting to think maybe I have.”

“Let’s try a different approach.” Professor Chen pulled a fresh sheet of paper toward him and began writing. “Instead of starting with the equation, let’s start with what we’re actually trying to find. What’s the question asking for?”

Coco leaned forward, forcing herself to focus. “The rate of change. How fast the population is growing at t equals five.”

“Good. And what do we know about the population at the start?”

They worked through it together, step by step, Professor Chen guiding without giving answers, asking questions that led Coco toward her own understanding. It was slow work, frustrating work, the kind of work that made her question why she’d ever thought engineering was a good idea. But gradually, the fog began to lift.

“Oh,” she said suddenly, sitting up straight. “Oh, I see. It’s not that I didn’t understand the equation—I was using the wrong initial conditions.”

“Exactly.” Professor Chen’s smile widened. “You had all the pieces. You just had them in the wrong order.”

Coco stared at the problem, now solved neatly in her notebook, and felt a rush of something that was almost euphoria. This was why she’d chosen engineering, despite the late nights and the frustration and the constant temptation to switch to something easier. This moment—the moment when something impossible became possible, when confusion crystallized into clarity—made it all worth it.

“Thank you,” she said, meaning it. “I don’t know how you do that. Make it make sense.”

“I’ve been teaching for fifteen years. You learn a few tricks.” He glanced at the clock on his office wall. “It’s getting late. Do you have everything you need for the problem set?”

Coco checked her notebook. “I think so. I want to rework a few of the earlier ones now that I actually understand what I’m doing, but yeah. I think I’ve got it.”

“Good. Email me if you get stuck again.” He stood, gathering his own papers. “And Coco? Don’t be so hard on yourself. This is difficult material. The fact that you’re struggling with it doesn’t mean you’re bad at it. It means you’re learning.”

She nodded, tucking her notebook into her bag. “Can I ask you something? Not about math?”

Professor Chen paused, his expression shifting slightly. “Of course.”

“How did you know you wanted to teach? Like, was it always the plan, or did you fall into it?”

He considered the question seriously, the way he considered everything. “I actually started in industry. Worked for a tech company for a few years after my PhD. Good money, interesting problems, smart colleagues. But I kept coming back to teaching—volunteering to mentor new hires, giving lunch-and-learn presentations, anything that let me explain things to people.” He smiled, remembering. “Eventually I realized that the part of my job I loved most wasn’t the work itself. It was helping other people understand the work. So I made the switch.”

“That’s really cool. To figure out what you actually love and then go do it.”

“It’s a luxury, I know. Not everyone can afford to follow their passion.” He looked at her with genuine interest. “What about you? Engineering’s a tough road. What keeps you on it?”

Coco thought about it. “I like building things. Fixing things. Understanding how they work. My dad was a mechanic, and I used to spend weekends in his shop just watching him work on engines. He’d explain what he was doing, and I’d hand him tools, and it felt like magic. Like he could take this broken thing and make it work again just by knowing it well enough.” She shrugged. “Engineering feels like that, kind of. Taking problems and figuring out how to solve them.”

“Sounds like you’re in the right place, then.”

“Yeah. I think I am.” She stood, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Thanks again, Professor Chen. For everything.”

“My pleasure. Good luck with the rest of the problem set.”

Coco walked out of his office and into the cool evening air, her mind buzzing with equations and possibilities. The campus was quiet at this hour, most students already at dinner or in their dorms. She took the long way back, walking past the library and the student union, letting the solutions settle in her brain.

In her pocket, her phone buzzed—her roommate again, asking if she wanted food. Coco typed back: “On my way. And I solved it. The math problem. Finally.”

The response came immediately: “OMG YES. Celebration dinner. My treat.”

Coco smiled and quickened her pace. The differential equations were still challenging, the problem set still daunting, the path to graduation still long and uncertain. But tonight, she’d won a small victory. She’d struggled, and she’d persevered, and she’d learned something not just about math but about herself.

Professor Chen was right: the uncomfortable space between knowing and doing was where real learning happened. And Coco was finally learning to be comfortable there.