one thing i always appreciate about being in an american university is that you just have to go talk to people. no, that doesn't solve all your problems (especially not when you are the problem) but so frequently i've found that it once you do, it makes such a difference, if only so everyone knows where they stand, and it helps you find your feet again. i don't think talking to your teacher is something that, being asian, i've ever really been aware of as a possibility, so that after all this time here, and having talked to people so often, i'm still always slightly surprised when these meetings go so well. and maybe it's this school too, because in my time here i have found my world filled with people who are sympathetic, who give good advice, who care. i'm so glad i didn't end up at columbia, where, brilliant as the people are, i don't think i could have surrounded myself with people so kind or supportive.

thursday i skipped all my classes because i was incredibly sick of the semester and smuggled myself across a snowy lawn to ambush bob reeder as he came out of pavilion eight from his shakespeare class. i was a little late, but he was kept back by a student who wanted to talk to him about paper topics (my backup plan, if he had proven unambushable, was to have gone to nohrnberg's graduate milton class and beg him to let me sit in for the day, because i desperately needed someone to talk brilliant sense.) we went to lunch at cafe europa and i explained my unhappiness over my english class, and sought his advice about whether to talk to my ta or not. i had just got a reproving email about not having turned in the requisite number of response papers (we're supposed to have written five 2-page papers by next week, i've done only one as of wednesday) on top of all that, i've been delinquent. i've used up my 2 section absences, just into the 5th week of school; of 12 lectures thus far i have attended 4, and i've not done half the readings or even bought some of the books. at the same time, i'm madly bored by my class, a 1700s-1900s literary history survey which is required for majors and pitched somewhat low, since it is taught lecture-style to 300 people. also, the literary historian's approach doesn't really interest me. cultural formations, attitudes, movements, things i've never been too enthusiastic about in more than a vague way. bob wisely recognised that i've been nohrnbergified. nohrnberg is all about structures. taking things apart and putting them together in ways you never imagined possible till he shows you so. theories! sources! analogues! approaches! that's the sort of thing that gets me dazed and awed and hummingbirding it like anything. at the same time, i loathe sections, because i loathe the people in it, because i clam up in them, and yet, even as i feel this class is too easy, i'm also not doing well. but i know very well that it hasn't a thing to do with my ta. when i was a first year, i was critical of tas, but as i get closer to becoming one myself i have become very appreciative of how hard their job is, teaching for the first time in their lives, while keeping up with their own classes, being pretty junior in the department and still finding their feet, and, since i found out that tas are assigned to courses which may be completely outside their field, (how many conrad scholars can really teach chaucer with ease? how many hardcore early medievalists are that brave about teaching post-colonial lit?) i learnt that to expect them to know everything is unfair. and i recognise how threatening or obnoxious students can be to their tas. i feel great anxiety for them, i want things to go right for them becos i want things to go right fo me in future! remember laura ingalls wilder teaching school? and how frightened she was? and i especially don't want to say or do anything to upset mine, or hurt her feelings in anyway at all. how would i feel in her place? probably very discouraged!

and i like my ta. she's smart, extremely nice, and above all, what i like most about her, is that i know she cares about what she does, and she shows it without abashment, and without pretensions too. not your i'm-so-cynical and i-hate-students grad student. in some ways, i think i like her because i sense that she's like me. i would never be a cristina cervone, the serious-minded scholar, intense and focussed and organised and nose-to-the-grindstone, in every respect the model of how-to-do-it-well. nor would i be the popular and ambitious type, well-connected, confident, professional, who know when and how to make all the right moves, the model of how-to-do-it-right. i would be the disorganised one that got papers in late and forgot things and missed deadlines and happily drifting along being blur, but really loving school. and she strikes me as being a little like that. when i apologised for my late response papers she confided that she's not good at keeping up with her responses either, and that last semester, she had turned in 6 response papers in the last week for one of her classes. that made me feel she understood right away. no. i don't admire her or think of her as a model at all, but i like her very much. she's probably the same age as me, i think, if she came straight from college, and is a second year grad student. i think we could be good friends if we were classmates. so perhaps instead of talking to her, i explained to bob, perhaps i should just reform myself, turn in some good papers, and hope she changes her opinion of me. what good would it do? i asked? i'm the one who has been delinquent, how can i talk to her as if it's her job to do anything about it? and that's thinking like a singaporean :) talk to her, bob urged. so after class on friday i girded my loins and stayed behind to turn in my two papers personally, and apologised for their being late. she accepted them both, and suddenly everything came right again.

i had no idea what i was going to tell her, but it wasn't necessary because she began first by telling me how much she liked my first paper, which i felt rather guilty about, because i had been angry and was just showing off and stuffing it full of jargon for the heck of it. (i had also done it single space in size 9 font) she asked if i'd done extra research for it, so i told her where i got my sources, we started talking paper and not problems. we had an comfortable conversation about theses and school. i learnt something about her and her research, and she about mine. in the end, we left cabell hall and walked to the library together, in the light drizzle, talking about how nice charlottesville is. has that talk changed anything? no, i still am behind, and i still owe work. i am still not ready for an exam on friday. but i feel relieved. i am not in a vicious cycle where the more i owe work the more i'm afraid to go to class. i feel i know her a little better, and that i could smile and wave if i ran into her on grounds instead of ducking behind a pillar. i know we know where we stand. and i like that. i'm working on a new paper schedule, and i know there are others in class who are equally behind with their papers. i know she doesn't think i'm stupid. and all this without having to say a single offensive or unhelpful thing. i don't think class will be that bad anymore!