Getting Schooled

I am currently going to school as part of the summer session for French and learning a lot as a result.  I am also, however, getting schooled.  This is an entirely different thing, although not as unrelated as I would like to think.

It seems that I am a person that people like to pick on.  Not in a traditional sense of taunting, but taunting nonetheless.  A friend who reads this blog can attest that I got picked on at a Caribbean take out joint in a most bizarre yet playful yet "I'm-not-sure-I'm-in-on-the-joke" kind of way.  It's like I wear a sign that says "I have mediocre self-esteem, please make me feel bad because I have an ounce of dignity to spare".  Or maybe I just look naive?  I had a professor at AU that anyone who went to grad school with me knows all too well taunted me...perhaps not purposefully...but still.  It was like every interaction was fraught with me being humiliated in some way through our interactions and severe lack of ability to speak each other's language.  

I am sad to report that I am ALREADY in this same situation in this meager, no credit, "French for Reading" course.  Today, the professor -- for the third time in only 5 classes -- had me read the longest and most complicated passage (and no, I am not the best French speaker in the class) and watched me suffer through about 40 minutes of our three hour class to do it poorly. It's a long story, but he went off on some tirade in the middle of my attempt at translation, which seemed to refer to me specifically and me as a representative of all American graduate students, about how I (we?!) don't ask enough questions for fear of not sounding stupid, but we are stupid because we don't know these things and more stupid because we don't ask.  Yeah, ouch.  The worst part is that I thought that I had just asked him a question.  

This is akin to what I went through as a master's student, and yes, I alone have begged and pleaded to take on at least three more years of this not-so-subtle breaking down of my pride and dignity.  Mind you, this professor selected me to TA for him in the spring...but my best guess is that he didn't necessarily "select" me because I'm guessing no one else applied to work with him!

At any rate, after a break in the class, he then, somewhat playfully, returned to me -- even though there were still several people in the class who had not translated anything at all today -- to take on a passage of a Victor Hugo poem.  He said "Sarah, since you like long passages so much, why don't you take this one".  Um, what?!  I basically lost it and cried out "Why are you torturing me?!"  To which everyone laughed...but I wasn't joking.  I was really miserable and humiliated and confused at his taunting and seeming playfulness.

I'm not sure what this post is meant to share other than the fact that I learned a long time ago that the things that shame someone are the hardest things to share with others and suffering shame alone typically leads into some form of self-loathing.  But I guess because I also feel like this is an example of what getting schooled is like.  You get smarter, and you get to learn a lot of interesting things at the very same time that you are left feeling dumber and less learned than you have ever been in your entire life.  Even though I haven't yet matriculated, I believe I have had my first official day as a real life PhD student.  It's pretty terrifying.

Playing Trivia Pursuit tonight, which I've always played terribly, with smarty pants "sun of my life" was also probably not the best way to respond to the day.  I've been schooled.  Again.