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fearlesstempOkay, seriously? Britney Spears's new single? Is awesome. I heard it in the car tonight and I can't get it out of my head, and I'm thisclose to driving to the nearest 24 Hour WalMart (even if, as Helen pointed out, they are evil!!!) to buy her CD because I want to hear it again. Toxic! It's so good.
That said: I heard the song while driving home from my first class of the term, which was scary and intimidating!! But it seems like it will be interesting, so I will probably keep the class, even if I feel like a total stupid loser sitting there. Today the professor did the First Day Getting To Know You Thing, and asked all of us to fill out a sheet of paper with the following information:
(1) Name
(2) Phone number
(3) E-mail addy
(4) Degree program
(5) Where we got our BA, and
(6) Why we're taking the course, and what we do when not in class -- jobs, etc.
Okay, so questions 1,2,3, and 5 were fine, but for (4) I had to write down "non-matriculated graduate student" which, as some of you may know, is basically a long way of writing "flake" and for (6), I had to say, "I've been considering returning to school full time, and so have been taking occasional graduate courses while doing temporary office work since graduating from college in May 2002" which is an even longer way of writing "flake." But, you know, must be honest! Cannot make up false history rivaling that of other classmates, like the woman who had been teaching feminist film theory at City College!
It was all easier for me to do since it was being written down, and not said aloud because, as I've said often, I am not good at public speaking. Or speaking to any group of people larger than four or so who I do not know extremely well. I passed forward my little piece of paper with my best Good Little Student Smile on, and waited for class to begin, only to watch the professor rifle through the papers for a minute and then turn to the person beside him.
"Your name?" he said, and the person gave it to him.
"Ah," he said. "I see you're Very Intellectual and Accomplished."
Actually, he said a lot more than that, in greater detail -- basically summarizing what was written down on the sheet, but I can't *remember* what was on that guy's sheet because I spent that moment riding out the wave of soul-crushing panic I felt at realizing that everyone in the class was going to hear about how lame I was! And, okay, I was overreacting, but that's what I *do* in these situations.
I spent the next ten minutes or so watching him go around the room and read out from everyone's little (6) section on their sheet, except for one or two people who he'd had in several other classes who just got a nod of recognition and a pass, and then he finally got to me. I sat there, trying to look confident and self-assured (as if I had developed in the past five minutes some version of what Bridget Jones would call inner poise).
He nodded at me, and I gave a dorky wave before saying, "Jessica MyLastName."
"Ah," he said, and pulled my sheet of paper out. "Jessica MyLastName...okay, you put your e-mail address down, good, good...non-matriculated -- hmmm...huh."
And then he furrowed his brow, finished reading, and flipped the paper over! That was it! Moved onto the next person!
I sat there kind of stunned and, initially, relieved, but then quickly horrified because! Apparently I am so lame that he, like, wanted to spare me the embarrassment of sharing my lameness with the class! And then I felt kind of indignant about it, wanted to jump up and say something like, "I'll have you know I was Temp of the Month, pal!" and challenge him to a collating contest or something.
The rest of the class was decent, though I did have another moment of soul-crushing ohmygoodnessIdon'tbelong panic when the person sitting across from me raised his hand halfway through my professor's discussion of the first week's reading and said, "Now, when you say 'deconstruct' do you mean it in the [lots of long multi-syllabic words]."
I almost heard the whoosh of the concepts flying over my head. The only thing that saved me was that I wasn't alone, and my professor turned to the guy and said, "I'm lost," when he finished speaking. After a brief foray into structuralism, the two of them worked out what the other one had been meaning, and while I was left in the academic dust, I felt not quite so awful about it as I had initially.
In any case, the episode served to bring to the forefront the That Guy of the class. You know That Guy? The guy who's done all sorts of esoteric research on obscure French philosophers so that when the professor's lecturing, he'll pipe in with a bizarre, but not completely off-topic question that casually demonstrates his brilliance? Now, see, That Guy is not being a jerk about it; if he were being a jerk about it, trying to show off, we would call him That Arrogant Jerk, or something else mildly mean. That Guy honestly doesn't know better! He thinks we're all on the same page when he lays out these questions when, actually, most of us are chapters behind him, or wishing we had a dictionary to pull out so that we can figure out what he's saying!
Ah, to be effortlessly brilliant. I spend so much energy trying to seem mildly engaged. Right now I think I'm going to go spend a few hours being totally asleep.
That said: I heard the song while driving home from my first class of the term, which was scary and intimidating!! But it seems like it will be interesting, so I will probably keep the class, even if I feel like a total stupid loser sitting there. Today the professor did the First Day Getting To Know You Thing, and asked all of us to fill out a sheet of paper with the following information:
(1) Name
(2) Phone number
(3) E-mail addy
(4) Degree program
(5) Where we got our BA, and
(6) Why we're taking the course, and what we do when not in class -- jobs, etc.
Okay, so questions 1,2,3, and 5 were fine, but for (4) I had to write down "non-matriculated graduate student" which, as some of you may know, is basically a long way of writing "flake" and for (6), I had to say, "I've been considering returning to school full time, and so have been taking occasional graduate courses while doing temporary office work since graduating from college in May 2002" which is an even longer way of writing "flake." But, you know, must be honest! Cannot make up false history rivaling that of other classmates, like the woman who had been teaching feminist film theory at City College!
It was all easier for me to do since it was being written down, and not said aloud because, as I've said often, I am not good at public speaking. Or speaking to any group of people larger than four or so who I do not know extremely well. I passed forward my little piece of paper with my best Good Little Student Smile on, and waited for class to begin, only to watch the professor rifle through the papers for a minute and then turn to the person beside him.
"Your name?" he said, and the person gave it to him.
"Ah," he said. "I see you're Very Intellectual and Accomplished."
Actually, he said a lot more than that, in greater detail -- basically summarizing what was written down on the sheet, but I can't *remember* what was on that guy's sheet because I spent that moment riding out the wave of soul-crushing panic I felt at realizing that everyone in the class was going to hear about how lame I was! And, okay, I was overreacting, but that's what I *do* in these situations.
I spent the next ten minutes or so watching him go around the room and read out from everyone's little (6) section on their sheet, except for one or two people who he'd had in several other classes who just got a nod of recognition and a pass, and then he finally got to me. I sat there, trying to look confident and self-assured (as if I had developed in the past five minutes some version of what Bridget Jones would call inner poise).
He nodded at me, and I gave a dorky wave before saying, "Jessica MyLastName."
"Ah," he said, and pulled my sheet of paper out. "Jessica MyLastName...okay, you put your e-mail address down, good, good...non-matriculated -- hmmm...huh."
And then he furrowed his brow, finished reading, and flipped the paper over! That was it! Moved onto the next person!
I sat there kind of stunned and, initially, relieved, but then quickly horrified because! Apparently I am so lame that he, like, wanted to spare me the embarrassment of sharing my lameness with the class! And then I felt kind of indignant about it, wanted to jump up and say something like, "I'll have you know I was Temp of the Month, pal!" and challenge him to a collating contest or something.
The rest of the class was decent, though I did have another moment of soul-crushing ohmygoodnessIdon'tbelong panic when the person sitting across from me raised his hand halfway through my professor's discussion of the first week's reading and said, "Now, when you say 'deconstruct' do you mean it in the [lots of long multi-syllabic words]."
I almost heard the whoosh of the concepts flying over my head. The only thing that saved me was that I wasn't alone, and my professor turned to the guy and said, "I'm lost," when he finished speaking. After a brief foray into structuralism, the two of them worked out what the other one had been meaning, and while I was left in the academic dust, I felt not quite so awful about it as I had initially.
In any case, the episode served to bring to the forefront the That Guy of the class. You know That Guy? The guy who's done all sorts of esoteric research on obscure French philosophers so that when the professor's lecturing, he'll pipe in with a bizarre, but not completely off-topic question that casually demonstrates his brilliance? Now, see, That Guy is not being a jerk about it; if he were being a jerk about it, trying to show off, we would call him That Arrogant Jerk, or something else mildly mean. That Guy honestly doesn't know better! He thinks we're all on the same page when he lays out these questions when, actually, most of us are chapters behind him, or wishing we had a dictionary to pull out so that we can figure out what he's saying!
Ah, to be effortlessly brilliant. I spend so much energy trying to seem mildly engaged. Right now I think I'm going to go spend a few hours being totally asleep.
