Bad Glacier

Probably the only reason I’m not as overwhelmed as CM seems to be is that my girlfriend came up to visit this weekend. Instead of spending the weekend chained to my desk, we went to the aquarium (which was awesome–pics up later in the week, hopefully), watched movies, wandered the Cambridge area, and ate at a few area restaurants. Admittedly, I did some reading too, but it was a very relaxing weekend all in all (and I hope you now understand why there haven’t been any posts here since last Wednesday).

And boy, did I need a relaxing weekend. I got called on–and completely taken apart–in class Friday. This professor likes to work his way down the row, and the person beside me was nailed first, so I should have known it was coming. But still, when I heard, “Mr. Josh, what do you think about that?” I didn’t comprehend for a second or two.

I now understand the phrase “deer in the headlights” from an entirely different perspective. There I am, just moseying along through the forest, chewing up a few leaves, writing down the interesting things that are being said, when I notice that something’s wrong. What’s this? The ground is hard and black here, and there are no more trees. And why is the person beside me talking? And then, the headlights. The horn. The large object hurtling at you surprisingly fast. The question on the part of the opinion you almost, but not quite, remember.

The language center of your brain shuts down. Your mouth hangs open. Your hands shake. Your eyes skim over the text too quickly to actually read anything. You forget words like “contract” and “bailment,” and end up saying something like, “Well, the thing the people agreed on, it’s a reason to find for the plaint–defen–the… the car driver person.”

As far as I know, my section, unlike CM’s, hasn’t started forming study groups yet, but after my performance on Friday, it’s quite possible that I’ll be blackballed. Really though, I’m not taking it too hard. It’s been impressed on me too many times now that grades are based on the exam, not in-class performance. Everyone locks up from time to time. It was just my turn.

Anyways, I did better today in another class. Girlfriend and I saw this professor Sunday night when we went out to eat, and I don’t know whether she noticed me (I didn’t want to do the stalker thing and interrupt her meal to say hi), but the Professor did stare intently at the seating chart for several seconds before calling on me. I’m not saying that I was punished for having free time the night before class, but if you’re out on a date and your professor walks into the restaurant, it might not be a bad idea to pull the fire alarm, that’s all.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 19th, 2005 at 1:04 pm and is filed under 1L. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.