“Superheroes” • Daft Punk (by Aleithia Stephens)

It’s November 2022. 4:03 on Friday afternoon. I have two-and-a-half infographics to finish, and the chillwave-synthwave-future funk mixes I sometimes play in the background just aren’t going to cut it. If I want to leave campus on time, I need to break out the big guns.

Cans on. Volume up. Cue Discovery.

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I’m at a standing desk in an empty open-plan office, cranking up a house album of legal drinking age through a pair of mid-range headphones so I can crank out visual aids for an online MBA course on accounting fraud. Is this a sign of a Millennial midlife crisis?

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The real fraud is me, trying to manufacture auditory nostalgia for a non-existent past. I never reveled in the middle of a dance floor, strung out and sweat-drenched under the strobes. When Daft Punk released Discovery in 2001, I was checking out progressive rock CDs from the library, a phase that began after playing “Carry On Wayward Son” in high school marching band. I was in my mid-20s before I began dabbling in electronica, and Air’s downtempo score for The Virgin Suicides was my gateway to the genre. Nowadays, dream pop is more my speed, but Daft Punk helps me fake it till I make it with graphic design.

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Despite having three degrees, I got hired for this job because I know HTML. I QA Canvas courses, draft instructional video storyboards, and enhance PowerPoint decks—make them “look pretty,” as one faculty member told me. This isn’t the academic career I envisioned a decade ago in grad school. But since no one seems to need an expert on religion and politics in Colonial America, I’m not complaining. Besides, course development pays better than advising undergraduates, which I did for seven years.

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One infographic down, I’m halfway through Discovery. Track seven, “Superheroes,” features a one-second Barry Manilow sample—“Something’s in the air”—that loops against a relentless drum machine and later gives way to frenetic, glittering arpeggios. It’s either the most turbo-charged or tedious song on the album, depending on who you ask. For me, it's the song I turn to when I need to carry on clicking and not wonder why university administrators decided making lecture slides pretty is worth more money than helping students navigate academic uncertainty, financial strain, mental health crises, and now a fucking pandemic.

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Before I took this job, I was a study abroad advisor—the “fun” kind of advisor. It was fun, except when a student on the GI Bill told me he was spending Spring Break in Crimea, and when students in Hong Kong told me about Molotov cocktails exploding outside their dorm during protests, and when an English exchange student asked what a copay was after being medevaced for a heart condition, and when a French exchange student asked if she could go home after her sister was killed in the Bataclan terrorist attack. 

Then, when lockdown hit in March 2020, nobody could go anywhere. Another department offered me a 30 percent raise to fix broken links and make PowerPoints look pretty. I said yes.

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I missed working with students, so this semester I’m teaching a first-year experience course. It’s supposed to meet in person, but I let my kids Zoom in if they tell me they’ve tested positive. Last month during office hours, not one but two female students mentioned they were sexually assaulted in high school. I’m honored that these women have trusted me with something so personal. I’m also not sure how to carry it. Faculty and advisors aren’t trained counselors or chaplains; still, we face conversations like these all the time. 

But I don’t have time to reflect now. I let the beat carry me forward.

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To be honest, I actually kind of like this job. Instead of facing back-to-back appointments and never-ending email chains, I listen to music while working through a list of tasks that produce tangible results. Also, for the first time in years, I’m writing again. My workshop group meets tonight, which is why I need to leave on time. I think I’m going to make my deadline, but even if I didn’t, it wouldn’t really matter. Students won’t see this course until January. Nobody ever saved the world with an accounting infographic, and I’m learning how to live with that.

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Aleithia Stephens is a writer, educator, and choral musician. Her prose has appeared or is forthcoming in The Bulb Region, Glint Literary Journal, Painted Pebble Lit Mag, and elsewhere. After moving back to Oklahoma for the third time, she decided to call it home.

Instagram: aleithias.words