Victoria’s Secret
The students around me in the lecture hall held their breath. “Feels like when they open the envelope at the Academy Awards,” someone near me said. We were attending Dr. Hightower’s graduate seminar, “Art in the Age of Velvet Tea-Gowns.” Rosy light from stained glass windows silhouetted the professor standing at the podium in her invariably perfect posture. Her auburn hair was imprisoned in a tight bun, and she wore a high-collared white blouse under a dark gray blazer and a below-the-knee matching skirt with flat-heeled black shoes. Her gaze slowly swept the audience, dramatizing the suspense. The scholar hired only one of her top grad students for her prestigious museum curator internship and we were about to learn her choice for this semester’s program. “Come on!” someone whispered. I was probably the only relaxed …