A first-generation college student, hours from graduating, dreads leaving school and her faculty mentor for the "real world" and her traditional, Eastern European parents.

When a young father is hired for an English instructorship position, he struggles to balance playing the role of a teacher and meeting the university’s demands for a published scholar.

A female professor at a contemporary university remembers an old conversation with a former teacher of hers, which prompts her to reconsider her job, solitude, and love of reading.

A professor in an unhappy marriage obsesses over and fantasizes about a much younger student, imagining how he will age.

A Stanford undergraduate student in the 1950s attempts to make friends and work out his professional goals. His academic and life path become drastically altered when his Hungarian roommate falls into depression.

As a university professor acts as a sounding board for everyone else’s problems, her own stress mounts to a dangerous peak.

Two jobless Harvard graduates who mostly read Marx and do acid reckon with the changing times since their days of revelry at university.

In the year 2000, Orion is a young software developer who’s hit it big with his tech company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Despite his long-term relationship, success, and newfound riches, he feels an emptiness in his life, leading him into dangerous territory.

A graduate student, on a trip in the Sonoran Desert, contemplates quitting her PhD program and moving on with life.

Ruthie, an experienced writer, reflects on the scholarship opportunity that set her career in motion.