I wake up to impatient emails from Steven Levy, the technology reporter for Newsweek (among many other impressive things). He wants to meet me for a piece on college blogs. We schedule a time and then I proceed to pace the halls to work out my nervousness.
Unable to do much else, I end up going to sociology class early, getting a seat closer to the front this time. Soon, TGIQ sits down one seat away from next to me. This not being the first time I am certain this is not accident (although writing this, upon reflection, that must have been her normal seat — the one she always sits on; it was I who had moved). As I agonize over forcing myself to say hi to her, she pulls out her laptop and begins pointedly ignoring me.
Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail and I can really see her face for the first time since the attraction seems to have warn off. But no, it’s still there as I learn as I feel the shocks whenever she looks at me, none so large as the one I get when she laughs at the teacher’s comment about girls pretending they’re sexually inexperienced to attract boyfriends while still pointed in my direction.
I tell myself I will say hi after the lecture but when the time come she quickly packs up and walks briskly. Again, it feels like she’s pointedly ignoring me. I stick around to jog after her bicycle to perhaps see where she lives, but this is obviously futile although I do see her take a turn towards my dorm. (It is unlikely she lives there, though; I would have almost certainly seen her.)
After lunch, where they wrecked my favorite meal (an amazingly good pizza), I head over to meet Levy. He sits smiling outside in his trademark glasses. We eat and he asks me about my blog, taking some notes on a yellow legal pad. Soon enough we’re through. He asks if Lessig’s around and I lead him to Lessig’s office. The door is closed but I find it’s unlocked. Too shy, I let the hardnosed journalist open it. Lessig is indeed inside reading a book. We chat for a bit and Lessig talks about my new norm again. He tells a story about how he’d written something on his blog and gotten a letter from Judge Posner complaining about it. Lessig’s reaction was something like “That’s not fair! You can’t criticize me for something I wrote on my blog — that’s private!” He tells the story in a tone that shows amusement at his indignation.
We leave and I walk with Levy part of the way back to his car. I ask him what he’s working on for a next book. He says he can’t tell me since he doesn’t want it on a blog. He has just come from visiting Google and he leaves to fly someplace else. Doing a weekly column seems like quite the feat.
On the way back from my Chomsky class, I get involved in a long discussion with a fellow journalism-technology fan. I end up missing Faculty Dinner Night (where members of the faculty come to our dorm’s cafeteria to eat dinner with us).
I also realize I have a paper due the next day which I haven’t started on. It’s supposed to be about Brown v. Board of Education so I write it about emergent effects and top-down imposition. I’ll post it (along with the comments it received) when I get it back.
posted November 29, 2004 01:17 AM (Education) (5 comments) #