Being a professor

I can imagine
being a professor
must be hard.

It must be;
otherwise I don't get
the uncombed hairdos,
the mismatched outfits,
the mis-stapled handout
and the bare-bones PPT.

It must be tough,
all that research for a living -
it's gotta be -
it must explain
how some papers disappear
for weeks on end;
it must be the cause
for the fourth cup of coffee
at ten in the morning;
it must be the reason
for the spaced-out looks
they sometimes wear
walking through the halls.

A good professor, though,
is gold and worth it all:
the papers you cried over at 2 a.m.,
the tuition fees that empty your accounts,
the jostling in a fifty-year-old elevator
that might stop mid-ascent
as you try to get to their lecture.

But yes; I suppose it must
be quite the life.