None of the other undergraduates and half the women do not come to class today. I assume it is because they haven't done the latest homework, homework which up to this point I have spent a bitter hour and a half contemplating, without so much as a single complete problem solved. i know. i should have spent more time on it. i know. but i didn't.
The probably-smartest-and-certainly-most-knowledgeable-about-semantics boy in my class says hello quietly as he files his way up my row. I have never actually talked to him in my life. I consider the reasons for this address as the class starts:
a) he is unusually friendly to frazzled-haired women who look up at him pathetically as he passes.
b) he considers me an intelligent equal, of sorts.
c) i am so over-my-head hopeless that i have drawn out his benevolent pity.
I have almost decided on the last one when our professor comes in dramatically and impeccably attired, as usual. She discards her hat and shawl and proceeds to write lovely linguistic love notes on the board, albeit through complex calculus equations. calculus. wonderful. i reluctantly raise my hand when she asks who has not quite gotten around to taking lambda calculus yet. (i must confess, dear reader, that i never really intend to get around to it, but she doesn't ask that question.) luckily, there are several other grads who raise their hands with me.
I must insert here, dear reader, that I am not completely stupid, or perhaps that semantics is not impossibly hard. Indeed, I think intuitively it makes perfect sense. It is simply that tedious (and essential)
proving of meaning that becomes an three page list of greek and english letters with endless superscripts (what is the point of the extra superscripts?). but i digress.
i write dutifully in my notes until i get lost, sometime after the board has been erased and re-erased to the point of illegibility. When she asks the class if she has done it right, only the possibly-smartest-and-certainly-the-most-knowledgeable-about-semantics boy answers. The boy next to me gets out some peanuts. I check the time.
In the end, she explains, it is either 1 or 0. Which is good, because I hadn't really expected anything else.
Now, she says, if you would turn in your homework, class is over.
We instantly mobilize. I am obsessively preoccupied in the snaps of my satchel and the hooks of my buttons, pointedly ignoring the pile of papers rapidly accumulating on her desk. Other people have started leaving. I am now obsessively preoccupied with getting out the door. I breathe. slowly.
I have escaped. temporarily. and I promise, dear reader, to go see her tomorrow, homework in hand. Eventually I tell myself, I will understand it. Or I will have a better work ethic. One or the other. I promise.
