An Academic Hallmark Christmas Movie
In the opening scene we meet our heroine: The Professor. (Some of you may recognize her.) As her final exam period ends, a classroom full of weary but excited students rush towards the doors. One of them shouts, “Enjoy your holiday break, professor!” and tosses a small candy cane to her. She tries to catch it but it hits the ground and breaks. Well. That’s about as much of a break as she feels like she’s going to get.
There is a montage of her leaving behind her big city, junior faculty, stressful life to spend three weeks in her hometown with a name that ends in “ville” and is in Georgia/Mississippi/Alabama or possibly a flyover state.
Her parents are thrilled to see her because “you work too hard!” Within seven minutes, her mother asks if she’s dating. Within nine, The Professor is trying to check her email on her phone — no cell reception. Fortunately the wifi password is her own birthday. She has 23 emails from students asking for extra credit opportunities. (As a reminder, the semester ended yesterday.)
When she opens her laptop, her father says “don’t you have three weeks off?” and as she opens the paper revision that is due to the journal days after Christmas, she just says “something like that” and five more emails come in from students complaining about grades.
The next day her mother suggests she go to a coffee shop to work. She even suggests which one. Our heroine isn’t sure why she is SURPRISED when she arrives only to find that her high school boyfriend owns the coffee shop and is a widower with a rosy-cheeked 8 year old.
It turns out that the coffee shop is in danger of closing. ON CHRISTMAS. Because, inexplicably, taxes are due on Christmas. He’s planning a fundraiser. Christmas cookies. He asks if she can help him bake the cookies. He has a red apron for her and everything. “You’re a teacher, right?” he says. “Teachers know how to bake.”
“I’m not going up for tenure on baking” she mutters, which is a joke he doesn’t understand, but she is already texting her awesome librarian sidekick/best friend to ask what she knows about tax law. Turns out she knows EVERYTHING because of some Boston Legal fanfiction she once wrote.
The Professor tells her ex boyfriend with the suspiciously muscular arms that she really needs to finish answering these emails, but that she’ll do some research for him. “But… baking?” he says, and she tells him that research is better. Really.
Outside, she runs into her former best friend whose life she knows literally every detail of because of Facebook. During some small talk, former best friend says “I can’t imagine what it must be like to have summers off AND not have kids! What do you do with all your free time?”
The Professor is so stunned by the question that she literally doesn’t remember later what she said in response (did she black out?), but she does tweet that comment verbatim to academic twitter and receives immediate validation for her outrage! Everyone reminds each other to actually take some time off over the holidays, and our heroine puts on an email auto-responder and feels better about herself.
There is a holiday party. To every person The Professor tells when asked that she is a professor, the next question is immediately “What do you teach?” and she eventually just gives up trying to explain why that is not the right question and answers vaguely, “Computer science.”
She gets tipsy on mulled wine and excitedly explains the premise of her recently accepted journal article to a group of high school friends. One of them politely asks, “How much do you get paid for one of those?” and she mumbles something and slinks off for more wine.
The next morning she emails the student who signed up to do an independent study on data science with her the next semester and had asked if there was anything he could do to prepare. She of course had told him at the time that he should relax and enjoy his break, but now says that if he REALLY wants to he can take a month off at the start of the semester if he does some work now, and outlines a project related to small town coffee shop revenues.
She also sends an email to her PhD student advisees reminding them that they should make sure to relax over the break, before opening and then closing an email reminding her that her review of a journal article is due December 26. She helps her mom bake.
In town, a white bearded man who is probably not ACTUALLY Santa tells her that instead of working so hard she should actually enjoy her life and celebrate Christmas! “WHY ARE THOSE THINGS MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE” she shouts as she ducks into a shop to buy Star Wars wrapping paper.
In her childhood bedroom, The Professor video chats with her awesome librarian sidekick, who giggles uncontrollably at the Avril Lavigne poster positioned behind a cardboard cut-out of Han Solo. Then they discuss tax law for 45 minutes and librarian sidekick introduces her to her sister’s cat. (This is the point in the film in which you get really good ideas for Professor/librarian fanfiction.)
More family arrives. Her uncle tells her that he saw on Facebook that incoming freshmen at her university have to swear an oath of fealty to Karl Marx and that students pledge allegiance to the pride flag at the start of every class.
On Christmas Eve she receives an angry email from a student’s mother about his grade in her class and she spends an hour drafting an email that is FERPA compliant. [Author’s note: Based on a true story.] Her own mother tells her she’s getting frown lines.
The moment of truth: Christmas morning, the entire town gathers at the coffee shop for a bake sale to raise $50k in taxes that are due by midnight. The Professor swoops in with a powerpoint presentation, a jupyter notebook full of Yelp data, and a fanfiction-based knowledge of tax law.
What follows is a montage of regression analysis, trend lines, librarian sidekick piping up via FaceTime, cups of coffee being shoved at The Profsssor as she clicks to another slide, including bullet points of FINDINGS re: tax law loopholes & investment opportunities. More coffee.
Someone starts a slow clap. Someone else gives her a Christmas cookie. The coffee shop owner/her ex boyfriend looks longingly at her, as if he might be ready to propose on the spot. The rosy-cheeked 8-year-old tugs on her hand and asks if she’s going to be her new mom.
The Professor politely explains that, no, she will not be her new mom. But she hands her an entire stack of the Girls Who Code books and then helps her set up an Instagram account for her dad’s business. “You will have to help him from now on,” she says solemnly.
The ex boyfriend approaches and, beaming, says that he has arranged a job for her, teaching math at the local high school. (“Thtat’s basically the same thing, right?”) Don’t worry, you don’t have to go back to your big city, tenure-track, stressful life! You can teach here instead! And marry me! And bake on the weekends!
Behind them, the white-bearded man who is probably not ACTUALLY Santa, holds out a red apron with The Professor’s name embroidered on it. It says “Mrs.” instead of “Dr.” Her mother is near tears. The rosy-cheeked child is wide-eyed. Everyone waits with bated breath for her answer.
The Professor looks down at her phone, where her awesome librarian sidekick is still on FaceTime and thankfully is muted, because she is DYING with laughter. “SAY YES TO THE APRON,” she snorts, tears streaming down her eyes.
Our heroine clears her throat, and politely says, “I have a journal review due tomorrow, and also a paper revision the day after, and also my tenure materials go in this summer, and also have you all lost your damn minds, so I’m afraid I’ll have to be going now.”
“By the way,” The Professor adds as she backs out of the coffee shop, “I am not married to my job! Believe it or not, you can move away from your hometown AND have a successful career AND date people who support that career AND be happy! In the big city!”
“I want to be on the tenure track when I grow up!” squeaks the rosy-cheeked child, followed by the quiet sound of the librarian cheering over FaceTime. Not-Santa looks scandalized.
With the warm glow of having saved Christmas AND avoided an implausible romantic entanglement, our hero joins her family for a lovely holiday, and afterwards finishes the paper revision over a glass of mulled wine and some cookies.
Our story closes with a montage of the rest of break: revising her syllabus, ice skating with her nephew, doing a review, tweeting advice for prospective PhD students, teaching the rosy-cheeked child how to use Scratch, reading a sci-fi novel, binge-watching Nailed It, outlining a paper.
She says goodbye to her small town family and returns to her big city, tenure-track, stressful life — and her other family. We close on the first lab meeting of the semester where her newest PhD advisee beams over news of her first paper acceptance. Academia bless us, every one.
Call me, Hallmark.
This was originally shared in 2019 as a thread on the platform formerly known as Twitter. It was a sequel to the academic murder mystery that I should also archive somewhere else. :)
Also, enjoy my 2020 TikTok skit version of this story! And if you’re still feeling festive, check out The AI Bias Before Christmas.
