Actions are far different than the Written.

As a follow up to my entry about being shunned in class, my confusion about his tone and overall reaction to me. I don't know. Life always arranges itself in strange ways (last night was an example that I will get into later). Confrontation that is. I always have people, particularly family, say I appear aloof. I don't like the sound of it. I also am just not sure whether it means acting above others, disinterested or just elsewhere, internal, in a peaceful realm somewhere within. It could mean none of those things. It could be really simple: I don't look like I give a damn or I'm a space cadet. Either way, I've had professors - men, if that makes any difference - react to me in front of entire classrooms in explosive sort of ways - not physically, but just behaving unlike themselves; as if I've truly conflicted them. I don't know why I am talking about this. But ultimately it must be because I want to understand the reactions I cause, so I know better what to and not to do. My sister always claims that she imagines I get defensive, abrupt, offending others; that the problem must be me, who I am, how I come across. Yes, we don't know who we are in the gaze of others, but I don't feel like I could let myself be that way to others. I think more times than not, I am soft spoken, firm minded, because I respond passionately and I try to give feedback that is hopeful, rather than criticism; if anything I am not critical enough and that is my own laziness. Absolutely. Aloofness, sure. But really, I am just a bit shy here. I don't really know anyone at school. It has never been that experience. I come and go. I resent this a bit. I have established a relation that will probably, hopefully, some day end up in a dedication. Looking back on last night, I didn't really see it then, only after as I thought back in the shower; standing on broadway, Burberry raincoats, her frail body, encouraging me, a sort of pep talk, as if she had watched me through elementary school and was now sending me off to middle. Victoria has certainly been my professor from the first day I walked into NYU, from there we went on creating independent studies together, she sent my recommendations to graduate school and she watched me through my colloquium. She read my first words and her guidance will follow me to my last. She shaped me. She helped me grow up. It wasn't my boyfriend that made me healthy again (though he did that in other ways), it was her without ever acknowledging my weight. At best she compared the situation to Virginia Woolf's struggle ("people forced food down her throat, trying to ripen her up, she hated them for it.") I remember when I came to that revelation. I remember the letter I sent her. Thanking her. And hoping she knew what I meant, but couldn't say directly. When I left for college, even before attending NYU in the spring of my sophomore year, I never believed I could/would read theory, philosophy. I thought I was all emotion; intoxicated my wine and romance, the cliches that are cliches for a reason. Last night I felt maybe Victoria was a second mom, guiding me, not through instruction, just telling me it was okay to try, showing me it was normal to just want to sit in the corner of the room and talk to one other about thoughts.

After every confrontation with a professor, I receive an email. I was scared to open it, but then there was this. Maybe?... it is all teaching me, that confrontation is how we establish our positions, how we show someone what they mean, and perhaps words are our chance to go back and explain ourselves. 

Thank you Chelsea. These were in my inbox when I got home last night. If you haven't arranged for N & C to receive your comments, please do so. And good luck on your colloquium. And I want to be clear about something. You bring a special quality to the class, which I value. You enter into classroom discussions with great independence and tremendous heart, and your own work introduced a narrative approach that I feel enriched the course dialectic for all of us. You've been a wonderful addition to our sessions. But the issues with the mundane exchange of class documents are not issues I've had with any other student, and it disturbs me that your carefully considered responses are somehow dropping into a void. I think it should concern you, too, and it remains your responsibility to resolve whatever has gone wrong. Any aloofness has been because I acknowledge my slacking and somehow I can't just resolve it. I've only felt guilty that I've been struggling with work. It embarrasses me. I need to break through myself. Off to San Francisco is a few hours.