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.

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.

An American student sent to study at Oxford University undergoes a mental crisis as he wavers between fitting in with his English peers and defining himself as an American who deeply loves the Midwest.

A high school English teacher copes with his disappointing reality by imagining a secret life for himself at a distinguished university campus - but he is shocked and furious when one of the students that he looks down upon has a similar method of escapism.

A mid-career academic at a New England college confronts a plagiarizing frat boy and unearths her own troubled past as a graduate student navigating a male-dominated field in the process.

At a New York university, an academically-gifted college sophomore becomes unlikely friends with a popular sorority girl on campus. Over the course of the year, their friendship slowly deteriorates, ending in lies, theft, and violence.

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.

Cutthroat department politics leave a young English professor in danger of losing his job and falling into obscurity. To save himself, he seizes on a playful lie that soon spirals far out of his control.

A failing friendship with another couple leads a community college teacher to leave the country.