Mic Check (1/1)

[drpeppergrinder]

In which my hot professor character Cal & his TAs brainstorm how to avoid deafening your class when you might sneeze into a microphone. (Instead of using my creative energies to write something that fits within the confines of the outline of the main long fic I'm working on, I wrote this thing that does not.) Have been curious about how someone would deal with sneezing whilst mic-ed since college when I had a hot professor who told us at the start of class he had a 'heavy cold,' and proceeded to disappoint me by not sneezing, which didn't stop me from imagining how he might handle it if he had.

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Jin is not late but the last to arrive this morning — the other TAs Asha and Inez already there, and Cal half-sitting half-leaning against his desk, arms folded and saying something to Inez about essay extensions, a thought he finishes up abruptly when he catches sight of Jin — and by the way Cal’s posture subtly straightens, it’s clear he was being anticipated. Cal is halfway through "Good morning,” before Jin can wonder why.

“Sorry to bombard you first thing, but I know you’re pretty savvy about the sound stuff with the mics in the lecture hall — do you know if there’s an easy way to quickly mute and unmute the lav mic?”

“There’s a mute button on the belt clip but you couldn’t really get to it quickly unless you were like... holding it in your hand.”

Cal thinks for a moment, scratches absently at his nose with the back of his hand. “Okay here’s the problem I’m dealing with. I have a cold and I’m almost certainly going to sneeze at some point over the course of this lecture.”

“Ohh.”

“And I’d prefer it not to be any louder than it already is going to be.”

Jin has never considered this scenario as being something a professor might have to deal with and the thought is not an appealing one, and he wonders in the back of his mind if this too will be added to the rotating roster of relatively banal anxieties conjured and explored in his mind while he sleeps. Perhaps a double feature with the one about going an entire class period with no awareness of there being visible residue of both ketchup and mustard around his mouth.

“Hmm. You can turn your head and cover your face with your arm or something… but it’s still gonna pick up some sound. Plus you’d have to be careful not to jostle the mic.”

Cal says, “Ahhh, damn, okay. Do you think I could conceivably wear the belt clip on the front of my pants or something so I can mute it more quickly?”

“It’s honestly really touchy, you could easily turn it off completely by accident if you’re not paying attention… Oh, you know what you could do?”

Cal’s expression is somewhere between cautious eagerness and mild desperation, and Jin notices, now, that he does happen to be wearing a turtleneck under another sweater under a jacket, which would indeed be a lot of outerwear for a healthy person to have on.

“There are other kinds of mics in the lecture hall’s capture system, you can just use a handheld mic.”

Cal brightens, relaxes, says, “Jin, have I told you I love you?”

He laughs. “We can do a sound test with one beforehand so you see the differences. You’ve used one before I assume?”

“Yes! My god Jin, you are my personal savior today.”

“Yeah the beauty of the handheld mic is it only really picks up what you want it to. You can just sort of,” he demonstrates a movement, “turn away from it and you should be good.”

As its blurb on the university’s website states, CWH 110 is “designed for an audience and performer relationship,” and features a pitched floor and tiered seating to give every student a clearer view of the lecturer. With a maximum capacity of three hundred and fifty, it is less classroom than theater, and today, to Jin, Asha and Inez, their mentor’s current predicament makes that distinction feel especially apparent.

“Okay snf! I’m gonna just like,” Cal grins, “assume the position and scream.” He turns away from the mic into his arm and shouts a quick “AHH!”

The TAs laugh, their voices carrying in the empty room.

“Did it pick that up at all?”

Inez, from the back row, in the seats for the particularly introverted or perpetually late, shouts, “No you’re good!”

Cal beams and mimes a little victory one-two punch.

“It is picking up the sniffling a little bit though.”

“Yeah I was kinda noticing that myself…” he says, sniffling again and listening for the acoustical effect of the sharp intake of air and liquid. A short blip of a staticky crackling sound echoes in the speakers. “Can I just pull the mic away from me when I do it?”

“No, you should try to keep it in the same place as much as you can or you might get feedback. You can move around but try not to move the mic.”

“Hmm, I suppose I can kind of strategize my sniffles,” he muses, in an almost businesslike tone that feels so out of place that Asha laughs.

“Yes, guys, this is an important part of teaching,” he continues in mock sincerity but breaks into a smile before he can finish. “Gotta work on your sniffle strategy.”

Cal tended to make difficult situations look easier than any of the TAs suspected they really were. Over the course of the year Asha had worked with him she’d never seen him in a genuine panic, which sometimes meant she felt the need to panic on his behalf, and now was one such time. The last week of the semester before finals was arguably the worst possible time for Cal to fall ill.

“Can we fiddle with the sensitivity of the mic?” She asks Jin.

He nods. “We can try that, yeah.”

“That would be amazing if we can just make it pick up a little less noise altogether,” Cal says. “Because to be honest it’s gonna be, snff! seventy-five minutes of, you know,” he gestures generally to his face, “more or less this. Probably more.”

“No, we can make it less sensitive. You'll just need to speak louder.”

“I can do that.”

“I want him to be careful with his voice though,” Asha cautions. “You have four lectures you gotta get through this week, Cal.”

Cal nods in agreement. “I’ve got a very complicated tea blend for this exact purpose that I’m about to break out.”

“Laryngitis-avoidance-at-all-costs blend.”

He laughs and then sniffles as a direct consequence of too sharp an exhale. “Dear-lord-please-help-me-get-through-this-week-mostly-intact blend.”

Asha turns to Jin and conspiratorially says, “Remind me to make sure there’s a tissue box on that podium.”

“Okay we’ll lower the mic gain a little bit at a time and see where we’re at. So let’s have you speak at each level and then I guess sniffle, if you can.”

“Oh I definitely can, that will not be an issue.”

After a few minutes of coordination between Jin on the mixing board and Cal experimenting with speaking volume and the optimum distance from his face to hold the microphone, they find a sensitivity at which sniffle static becomes a less prominent feature of Cal’s sentences, at least to his own relative satisfaction.

“I think that’s as good as we’re gonna get it.”

Asha eyes Cal suspiciously. “You’re sure it’s not gonna wear on you, talking at that volume for four days?”

“It’s not that bad, I’ll be—” he stops mid-sentence, raises a finger and says “Oh,” with significance before twisting carefully sideways into his crooked arm while keeping his hand on the mic as steady he can, and the balancing act reminds him of trying not to spill an overfull glass while tripping. The sound is not quite startling, but certainly loud enough to suspend any doubt as to his concerns. “hehd’DESSHHoo!! EHSHHHue!”

“Bless you,” in a three part harmony.

Cal picks his head up and thanks them with a multisyllable sniffle and something like excitement. “Such serendipitous sneeze timing! snfff! Could you hear that over the speakers?”

“Nope! I mean not over the speakers but I can definitely, you know, still hear it.”

“Well yes,” Cal smiles wryly, “but that’s okay. Won’t be the first time.”

“Yikes,” Inez says, of a sentence so flippant it shocks her. “I’d be mortified personally.” Asha and Jin echo the sentiment.

“I’d certainly prefer not to,” Cal laughs, taking a quick scrub at his nose with his knuckles, “but as long as I’m not gonna blow out the speakers or deafen my students it’s not the end of the world.”

“Seriously though Cal,” Asha chimes in, “how long do you have to teach in front of big classes before something like that doesn’t make you so embarrassed you want to die?”

He ponders for a second. “You know, with college students, and grad students especially, they tend to be pretty tolerant and kind, in my experience. Snf! If you’re hanging your head in shame after you take a sip of water and choke on it a little they’ll probably feel bad for you, but if you make a self deprecating joke afterward or sort of laugh at yourself it relieves the tension.”

Inez is unconvinced. “I feel like there’s more to it than that, though. They have to already like you.”

“Well it’s like with any form of public speaking, they’ll reflect back the energy you’re putting out. snffh! It just kinda happens along the way. You get tongue tied and trip over your words every so often and live to tell the tale and it feels less catastrophic when you do it again.”

He stops to bring a fist to his mouth and clear his throat. “And just being upfront will make it less uncomfortable too. Like today considering it’ll become apparent pretty quickly anyway, I’m gonna mention I have a cold at the start of class and just kind of, snff!, apologize in advance and ask them to bear with me.”

They all nod, none of them fully believing such confidence was something that could possibly be taught. This massive empty room where they felt so at ease would, in just forty-five minutes time, become something else entirely. It wasn’t the individual student that they feared—or rather, it was—but in the form of what happened when so many bodies converged together in the same lecture hall, all staring one way in their seats, influenced by each other’s laughter and attention and inattention, each other’s body language, whether someone sitting in front of them was falling asleep or scrolling social media with their screen in full view to everyone behind them, the possibility of broadcasting indifference like some domino effect, all becoming one crowd, one set of reactions; one thing to entertain, to teach, to remain in control of.

It was hard to imagine Caliph Chowdhury fearing others, whether in the form of one person or many, and all but Asha, who had worked with him the longest and spoken to him about his past at some length, were in disbelief that Cal himself had ever been capable of cowering in front of a crowd.

But of course he had.

As if reading their minds, or more likely their faces, Cal says, “I know it’s easier said than done, but it does happen along the way. I promise, you’ll see.”

“As much as we always appreciate your words of wisdom,” Asha says, “I would really, really like for you to start trying to save your voice.”

He laughs. “Asha you’re gonna be a stickler about this, huh?”

“Someone has to! Or else you’re gonna be mute by Wednesday.”

Cal mimes zipping his mouth shut but a couple seconds later his brows animate with agitation as he gasps into an inhale and ducks into the lapel of his jacket, ruining the effect with two strangled sneezes that drag along his throat and deal more damage than every collective word spoken. “EyyyYESSHH-shue! EHGSSHHue!”

They bless him again and he snuffles through a thank you, then peers inside his jacket with a mixture of dismay and amusement. “Guess I’ll uhhh, be keeping this on.”

Everyone laughs save for Asha who taps Cal with the rolled copy of the syllabus she’s holding and says, “Please go make your fancy tea.”

“Yeah, good call.”

[aggedy_ann]

I adore this.  🥰

[angora48]

Great story! I love the whole, "Yes I'm sick, yes I'm kind of embarrassed, but I have a job to do so let's just get on with it" attitude. I liked Cal's TAs rallying around him, trying to help him out and offer suggestions while also still being a little in awe of him at how he does it - very cute.

[Feo]

I like this fantasy and hope you continue 😊