I am such a bore

How can you tell if you're boring? Lately I'm thinking I'm a huge bore - in the middle of listening to me talk, people yawn, get headaches, minimize eye contact, gaze off into space, invent excuses to leave. I never really put it together before, but gosh darn, I must be a complete failure at lively conversation. I always thought people avoided me coz I was mean, but now I think it must be a combination of my cruelty and dullness. I wondered if I bored CK today? We finally had lunch together, though I use the word together loosely. We were with like fifteen other people, because everyone attending the seminar today decided to eat together and discuss the course assignment and whether or not to audit or register for it. CK's not taking the class; he finished all his coursework and is focused mainly on his thesis now, which explains why I haven't seen him around before. He just happens to like the professor's work. I felt a little out of my league when all the doctorate students started discussing her books and theories; I haven't read any of her stuff, and to be perfectly honest, hadn't even heard of her before I showed up for her course. The same for Professor Nunan; it was only after I'd attended some of his seminars that I finally read a book he'd edited. It shows me again how fish-out-of-water I really am. The only names on my mind all through my undergrad days were Mendel, Watson and Crick. I didn't want CK to think I was an idiot ( I mean, the guy has a degree in linguistics), so I mostly just nodded and chimed in with stuff I remembered from my language assessment class. It went well, but the best part was on the way back to class, CK and I walked next to each other and he asked me about my individual study (basically, it's like a mini-thesis). I told him that honestly, I didn't have anything concrete in mind and he asked why I didn't research something I'd wondered about from my teaching experience. Well, that led into a whole discussion about how I'd veered off from medical science and didn't really have any teaching experience. He asked me what I'd liked about science so much I'd decided to major in it; that was a good question, I thought, and really, no one at grad school has ever bothered to ask me that. Their main concern is that I totally switched, from science to the arts. He was actually fascinated by how someone who is apparently thriving in an atmosphere where everything is about language could ever have liked something so disparate. So, of course, I talked all the way back to the classroom, coz it's not a simple question that can be answered with "Yeah, well, you know". In the middle of my talk, I noticed him looking a little to my side and that's when it flashed into my mind that I was a major bore. This puts a whole new spin on many of the events of the past few days, including (and I'm loathe to admit it), the incident that is still ticking me off two days later. If I'm really that boring, then what happened was actually a good thing, a face-preserving thing on my part. Yet, I don't know, I can't quite shake the feeling that it's actually how I conceived it and I should stay strong and not give in. Anyhow, it was great talking to CK, even if he did think I was dull. He's so cute; I just like looking at him. I'm going to make the most of our eight days together.

Final thought: Highly educated bores are by far the worst; they know so much, in such fiendish detail, to be boring about. Louis Kronenberger (Thank God I'm not very clever!)