During the first week of classes, I attended many courses before I decided which ones to stay in. One of the courses I visited was “Decades of the American Novel, the 1970s”. When I walked in it was pretty obvious that I didn’t belong there. Everyone already knew each other, and more importantly, the professor knew most of the students by name. It turns out that the course was a third-year literature course for English majors. I’ve never even taken a first-year literature course. I politely sat through the class for ninety minutes, all the while knowing that that course was way above my skill level. He had a reading list of something like eight or nine thick books on it, and we were expected to read and discuss them all and then write a 6000-word essay for our final. Writing this 5000-word blog is hard enough, and this isn’t even being graded.
After class, I took my time gathering my things since I didn’t know where I was going to go for lunch. As I was waiting with some students for the elevator, I struck up a small conversation about how I totally didn’t belong in that class. I guess I had a good impression on them, because a few of them invited me to eat lunch with them. Naturally, I felt like I didn’t belong, but it was nice of them to offer, so I joined the four of them at the Mensa. We ate Wienerschnitzel mit Pommes and they chatted in German about god knows what. At least they spoke English with me; it felt nice to be included every so often. After lunch, we walked to separate classes, and since I never went back to that class that was the last time I saw them. I wish I had pursued a friendship, but it’s hard when you cannot even remember their names and you know you’ll never have another class with them.
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