It’s been quite the busy week around here. Just about every afternoon there was some errand to run after school. Homework had to be done in the evenings, or at least as much as I could manage before my brain said “Screw that, I’m turning off the lights and going home.” I’ve been doing my assignments the day before they’re due, which gives me a feeling of barely keeping up. Luckily I don’t have many commitments over the upcoming three-day weekend, so I’m hoping to gain a little ground academically.
I’ve also run across one aspect of college I’ve never liked: being hit on. One of my classmates seems to have targetted myself and meriwynn for flirtation; he touches our arms while talking to us, tells us how great we look, how nice we are, and so on. I set a bad precedent last week when I gave him a hug goodbye; normally I don’t like hugging people I barely know, but he seemed to be expecting something and I wanted to end the awkwardness. After that he expected a hug goodbye every day.
The first day it was mildly flattering, but frankly now it’s getting a little creepy. Tuesday I’m going to discuss it with him and ask him to tone it down, and tell him I’m really not comfortable being touched by someone I barely know. It’s quite possible he doesn’t realize he’s making us uncomfortable. But he can learn. I’ve found most guys are perfectly happy to do what I want if I just tell them unequivocally what that is.
I still don’t know if my spouse is right about my being an overachiever. I certainly wasn’t in high school. My mother recalls saying to me, “What is it with these C’s on your report card? You have an IQ of 136, you should be making straight A’s and certainly no less than B.”
“What can I say, Mom. I’m a classic underachiever.”
But maybe that’s changed since then, because there’s evidence that my mate may be right. At the end of my first accounting class, one of my classmates approached me to ask if I’d be willing to assist her. She’s deaf, and she was having trouble copying down what the instructor wrote on the board while watching her interpreter at the same time. She asked if I’d mind giving her a copy of my notes for the classes—she had some special carbon paper so I could just take notes as usual and then have two copies of them. I said that would be no problem.
I wondered as I was packing up why she’d selected me, because I’d been sitting on the other side of the room. As I turned to leave and saw the rest of the class, I understood her reasoning: I was the only one in the class who had been taking notes.
So I guess either my husband’s right and I’m an overachiever, or I’m the only one in the class who wasn’t getting it. I figure if the teacher is writing it on the board, I should write it in my notes. Hey, it’s worked for me so far.
