There was spring in the air and a spring in my step. Something about this season just resonated with me: the sense of boundless opportunity and optimism, a world around me that felt ripe for the taking. Of course, it wasn’t just about the liberated flowers, but the liberation spring brought to the wardrobes around town. In a sleepy college town like this, sundresses seemed to be everywhere. And what man wouldn’t be absolutely delighted with that? With floral patterns and that breezy playfulness that always seemed to tease the eye, it became a challenge to keep your eyes to yourself.

Walking around campus, heading into my lecture hall, I could feel that tingling sense of spring-time exuberance in the air. No, that felt like an inaccurate, incomplete way of describing it: there was lust in the air. Gone were the bulky winter jackets, in were the sundresses and ponytails. All these college girls that had been cooped up inside for so long, suddenly all too eager to show themselves outside with the perfect kind of outfit to draw more than just a peek from men like me. What I wasn’t expecting though was the looks I was getting, longing and lingering gazes, and the influx of cheeky flirting and stolen winks heading my way.

My colleagues jokingly referred to this as “birds and the bees” -season, warning me about warning what was in the air. The college was known as a MRS degree school in the best of times, but this reached a heightened peak each spring. Stories abound of professors finding female students purring for more than just scholastic attention on their desks, a temptation some just couldn’t resist. It wasn’t surprising to hear some of these heated dalliances ending up with a student knocked up and a professor sweating like Ryan Seacrest watching Brokeback Mountain.