All British People Are Geniuses.

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So there's a British guy in my British history class. I wish I could say that after a decade of obsessing over British TV, music and culture that I'd be immune to it, but I have to admit that everything that comes out of this guy's mouth seems like a brilliant idea. I mean, objectively speaking I know that the ideas coming out of his mouth are average, maybe good at best, but this doesn't seem to stop me and everyone else in the class (including the professor) from hanging on his every word. We girls are especially vulnerable to the Brit's unintentional charms, as on more than one occasion his contributions in class have been interrupted by a swooning sigh. Frankly, if this were still the era of corsets I think half of the class would be on the floor after a British-induced fainting spell.

I wonder if other English speaking countries (apart from the UK obviously) have this problem. Are Canadians as intrigued by British accents as we Americans are? Do South Africans think people with English accents are inherently smarter and better looking? I wish I could say we were discerning connoisseurs of British English, that the bonus in the perception of intelligence only applies to the Queen's English, but quite honestly I'm pretty sure we're drawn in even by Dick Van Dyke's rape of Cockney. Were we Americans to meet the real Bert I'm sure we'd think that, in spite of his filth-covered face, he's a brilliant looker.

For all I know my classmate is considered borderline retarded in his native England, and English women find him physically repulsive, but here in Illinois with his charming inability to correctly pronounce the letter "R," this guy is an Adonis who is one comment in British history class away from being nominated for a Nobel Prize. A Nobel Prize in what specifically, I'm not sure, but we Americans would find a way to create a category specially for this dude.

Now before anyone thinks I'm some sort of pervert, just know that I've had conversations about this with other girls in the class, and they've noticed it, too. One girl even admitted to spending most of class trying to compose English-flavored pickup lines to use on our classmate who is of the British persuasion...something about buttering crumpets. So there. Clearly there's at least one girl in class who is infinitely creepier than I am.

What I really find fascinating about this guy though is the fact that he seems completely bewildered. Much like someone who grew up in poverty only to win the lottery, it seems to me that he grew up in English schools, believing his was mediocre in both brains and looks, only to come to America and find that--for some reason completely beyond the scope of his English understanding--EVERYONE seems suddenly to be obsessed with his thoughts, opinions, and comments. The look in his eyes reminds me of the moment in Harry Potter when Harry finally learns that he's not a lame, scrawny kid with glasses, but rather a friggin' WIZARD. And I bet my classmate silently swears to himself that no one in England must ever know about the jackpot that is America, because an influx of Englishmen might diminish his new-found powers.

To be honest, I'm afraid the exact opposite is going to happen when (if) I go to England. Sort of like what being in Israel was like, except at least in Israel I had the language barrier to hide behind. But I mean, if we think the English sound intelligent, then that must mean they think we're idiots. Here in Illinois when I talk I seem reasonably intelligent, but next year in grad school in England (assuming I get in somewhere), when I share my opinion in my native American accent, will my classmates silently imagine a barefooted yokel playing a banjo?



On an rational level, surely they'll know I'm from the big, hippie city of Los Angeles, but I'm not so sure that'll stop them from imagining the song "The Mississippi Squirrel Revival" whenever I talk. Granted, they probably don't even know that song. Oh Jesus, why do I know that song?

Being a teacher

So I'm in the process of applying for teacher training programs. No big deal. The nice thing about my university though is that many professors force students to teach class once per quarter, so I'm at least sort of prepared. Until today I'd only done this for French classes, and I gotta say that I don't remember too well how they went. In French you're too busy trying to remember which word you need and in which tense/mood/person or whatever, and trying desperately not to accidentally say something inappropriate,* so you don't have a lot of energy left to pay attention to the daydreaming, doodling, and facebooking sitting before you.

*Example of something inappropriate: Today in Hebrew class a girl said "to fuck" instead of "to identify with." Apparently I was the only kid in class who knew how to say "to fuck" because I was the only person who laughed.

Anyway, all of this changed today when I had to be the teacher for the Religion Seminar. It actually wasn't too much work. Basically I just had to come up with a couple of questions, ask the class, and then WHOA off they go, debating with each other. For the most part I hate that class because many members of the class seem to think that even choirs of angels in heaven could not compare to the beauty that is their voice. There's one student in particular who's just so arrogant, pretentious and greedy with class time that I sometimes wonder whether or not his presence in my life is the karmic result of a murder-rape I committed in a previous life. The worst part of having people like this is that you assume that the teacher probably likes them, that they must get great grades. But that was until today, when I faced the class....and realized that this guy somehow manages to be even more grating when viewed from the teacher's perspective.

Someone asked a pretty inoffensive question about Emil Durkheim's definition of religion to hear the class's thoughts. You know, it's the sort of thing where you can passionately be like, "Oh, I disagree with Durkheim's interpretation and here's why," but it's hardly the Holocaust. But this boy, draped in a large shawl with swirly patterns with the same feminine drama of a 60's film star, this asshole rolls his eyes with such overwhelming surliness and disgust that I could have sworn he was having some kind of epileptic fit.

"Call an ambulance," I wanted to cry out, "Axe-Chin is having a stroke!" (I call him Axe-Chin because he has such a strong cleft in his chin that it looks like someone took an axe to his face...which is actually what I sometimes imagine doing after two and a half hours of class in which he can't figure out how to shut the fuck up.)

Anyway....it was an interesting experience. Apart from trying to politely beat Axe-Chin into submission so that shier members of class could share their thoughts, I didn't really do much besides watch people as they either paid attention, or daydreamed (and I sort of daydreamed about what they were daydreaming about), or doodled. It was kind of surreal, thinking that hopefully I'll be doing something like this a lot more in the future. Except unlike my profs here, I hope that I'll have the balls to say, "Shut the fuck up so that someone else can share what they think, you greedy bastard." How more professors don't throttle their students is just beyond me...

Techno Remix of Life

It's been a strange 24 hours. Last night I found a techno remix of the song "Kumbaya," which pretty much makes me life complete. The video for it is vaguely racist: A bunch of black guys in tribal gear are fighting (to a thumpin beat), and then this strange white guy, baby boomer age, has a revelation, and he sort of dances around with a cape and tribal paint and brings the gospel of love to the "savages." ...And bringing the gospel means standing in front of blue screens of sunsets and mountain tops, and dancing and reaching his hands to the sky as if in prayer. It is perhaps the funniest representation of what I consider to be the funniest song of the planet.

Anyway, this morning I walked into the bathroom on my way to my second class and found a girl wearing nothing but a hose. A garden hose. Wrapped around her body like strapless dress or something. There was a sort of awkward moment where I debated whether or not to just turn around and leave, like I had just walked in on an intimate moment, but that would throw me off schedule. After my initial surprise, I realized that she was probably just preparing herself for an art project, since I was on the same floor as many art classrooms...and this thought was strangely depressing. When I see bizarrity (yeah, that's a word now) in the world, I want it to be real. I don't like things to be bizarre intentionally, because that ruins the magic of the situation. I prefer when people are bizarre without trying, because to them their particular brand of behavior is normal. The weirdos I love are the sort of people who wake up and say to themselves, "Of COURSE I sing the Hokey Pokey loudly while I'm on my way to work," or "OF COURSE I look and act like Jesus." It's not a statement or choice, like dressing yourself in a hose for an art project is.

But eventually I left the hose girl and went on to my class taught by an Italian. I'm trying as much as possible to avoid giving dentifying details that could potentially embarrass someone (not that they would be reading my blog, but I'm just careful of what could turn up in a google search), so I'll just say that he teaches in the humanities. So, that narrows it down. But whatever, so I always try to be sensitive to foreign people, since I was once foreign and sounded about as smart as a babywipe when I spoke Hebrew....but sometimes it's just so hard. Today the prof kept using a word that sounded like "jomatical," like maybe five times. And I worked up a sweat trying to decide whether this was a word in English I didn't know or whether this Italian guy was just making up English words left and right. I wish I had tried that in Israel, making up words. Let's say you're pretty damn good at Hebrew, but you can't remember the word for "figuratively." So instead of embarrassing yourself by asking, you just totally whip up a new word out of the blue, but say it with such confidence that the natives wonder if they're the idiot.

I gotta say, I love this prof. He reminds me of a puppy. I think he's afraid of the microphone/speaker system, because every day he gets startled by the sound of his own voice in the speakers behind him, and so every day he asks in this sort of soft, wounded voice, "Is it too loud? Can you hear me?" And no one in the class responds, not even with simple yes or no gestures, and instead keep quietly chitchatting among themselves. So the prof says to himself in his little wounded voice, which is picked up by the mic and broadcast throughout the lecture hall, "Hmm...well, I think it's very loud...so....hmmm.....how do I do this...?"

Just a brief digression: my prof doesn't actually look like Mario. But he's Italian. So....they're probably somehow related.

I also really like that he, like most charming foreign people, doesn't quite use the right word. On several occasions he has said something like, "Just listen for a few more minutes and then I will liberate you early." I love the idea of using liberate instead of dismiss. It makes class feel so much more dramatic, as though once we're outside the lecture hall we've earned the status of "refugee," having been liberated from the camp of immense suffering and involuntary captivity that is that class, and now we must wander as asylum seekers to our next class. As though each anniversary of our liberation from class will be remembered as VJB Day (Victory in the Journalism Building Day), the sort of thing I'll tell my grandchildren about.

After class I sought asylum in the neighboring building, one that shelters both the religion and classics departments, and I immediately made a note to never set foot in that part of the building ever again. Why? Well, its halls are filled with wandering professors, professors that I've had before but have not kept in touch with, the kind of professor who once knew my name and my opinions on things but to whom I've since become a stranger because of a prolonged absence. It's humiliating to be around them, since I don't know whether I should acknowledge them and have them look startled and confused to be greeted by a person who is an apparent stranger to them (as has already happened), or if I should pretend that they are total strangers to me--which, I've found, can result in them greeting me as an old acquaintance.

Today I saw two former profs walking together (an uber Jew and an uber Christian, funnily enough), and they were getting really close to me as they made their way down the hall. And I, completely out of any reasonable options, pretended to be suddenly struck by an overwhelming fascination with a crumpled up flyer that I found at the last second in my sweatshirt. This was a real game changer for me, since normally I just avoid awkward interaction with people by pretending I don't see them because checking the time on my watch can take up to five minutes. If I don't have a flyer on hand and I forgot to wear my watch, sometimes if I'm really desperate I'll even read a Skittles wrapper.

Here's sort of what my normal interaction aversion techniques look like:

"I'm so sorry I didn't greet you, but this is an absolutely fascinating piece of trash I just found. Even more interesting than my watch."

I often wonder to myself, "What are you afraid of, Sam?" And to be honest, there's nothing to be afraid of. I live for awkward moments, and there's nothing to fear with these profs. How can I fear a professor who walks like a gangly teenager, in a sort of upright slouch with his hands in his pockets? Or maybe even more terrifying is the prof who looks like a red-faced "Mr. Magoo."

But no sooner had I escaped those two professors than I ran into an even older prof, a man who--at his best--I knew as a creepy old man. A prof who knew me well when I was in his class, but with whom I never really had a warm relationship with, to put it mildly. Having just used my flyer diversion, I was unprepared to suddenly resume my battle position. And I panicked. So, of course, I did was any reasonable person would do....

I just turned around and started running.

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