that’s NOT what I mean... exactly...

Ok, I’m going to try to straddle the line here between being politically incorrect and being overly defensive, so... bear with me...

I checked the roster for my courses for next semester (we’re right in the middle of registration) and already my astronomy class has 16 out of 25 slots filled. Pretty cool. But there is one weird little thing. This class is open to all the “divisions” of the university... including the art school. We at the Undergraduate division don’t interact with the art school too much, so I don’t know a whole lot about it. But apparently it has a very large Asian population. I don’t know why... the rest of the college is oppressively white, but... that’s not the point. The point is, of the 16 kids registered for this class, something like 8 or 10 are Asian females. And my only thought today was... ”Fuck... I am NEVER going to learn these kids names!

And it’s NOT because think all Asian people look alike OK? It’s not. But lets’ be fair... if there were 10 blonde, Nordic-looking young women in the class... that would take a while to sort out. Because while they may not all “look alike”, your first order approximation would still be... tall... thin... blonde hair. And so my first order approximation in this case (short... thin... black hair) simply provides no differentiating criteria. Which means I have to go IMMEDIATELY to the second order traits to try to hang people on a memory hook. At least with art students, maybe a few of them will have BLUE hair or something.

But the real problem isn’t even physical appearance... it’s the NAMES. I’m bad with names anyway. It’s the middle of November, and I’ve only just recently figured out who is who in my two classes. I’ve only got 35 students! And I still sometimes can’t remember which one is Julia and which one is Emily. My high school students? Who I only see once a week? Forget about it. Out of 13 of them, I know maybe half of their names. I have no idea why. My brain just does NOT attach enough importance to that task, or something... attaching names to faces. And it’s bad enough when there is a “hook” there already. Like when you meet someone named “Julia”... there are already some neurons in you brain who know that “Julia” is a NAME... you just have to link up that person to that name. But if you meet someone named Soon Yi or Ming Ha... you have to learn the NAME first... and at the same time link it up to that person. I can’t deal with forming 10 new name-hooks all at once... it’s gonna kill me. I’m gonna have to assign seats!

D.