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

A college counselor watches anxiously as her teenage son applies to college without her help. As her son plans for his future, the counselor and her husband reflect on how quickly their lives have changed, seeking ways to steady themselves in the midst of middle age.

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 professor finds himself attracted to one of his students, allowing her to skip the final exams - but her resultant grade causes her to lash out at him and reveal harsh truths about his own life that he finds difficult to accept.

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

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

To earn enough money for college, a high school graduate takes a grueling factory job. He expects his only takeaway from the work to be a paycheck, but a mysterious coworker teaches him about the world and his place in it.

In a society where civilians are monitored by personality tests that surveil whether they are being perfect citizens, a 1970s high school teacher meets an over-achieving student who forces him to confront the forced boredom dominating his own life.

An employee writes a heartfelt letter to his former boss to argue that he was wrongfully fired. As he lays out his life story, his hidden cowardice and stubborn ambitions paint a different story.