Indian Girl

So I went to the library this afternoon for some peace and quiet. Got my special seat, powered up the laptop, began typing some ideas and reviewing old entries. Looked like it would shape up to be a productive and recharging four hours in my home-away-from-home.

However, I was quickly drawn in to conversation happening at a table diagonal to my semi-hidden desk. I couldn’t see faces or figures, but I heard voices, and at first I was annoyed. How long would this last? I wondered. As the talking continued, I fantasized about reporting them to the reference librarian. I thought about moving but, Sheldon Cooper-like, this is my seat in my library. I began to get flustered that my four hour respite from hustlebustletalktalktalk of family and worklife would be inconsiderately swept away.

Then, a couple snippets of their conversation came my way. Things like:

Gravitation.

Centripetal Force.

dv / dt.

Harmonic function.

Orbitals.

Ah, physics!

I peeked over the edge of my fortress walls. A grizzled, weary man in his mid-fifties sat opposite a perky Indian girl somewhere in her late teens. He wore the requisite garb of a physics professor: gray pants, a flannel-ish shirt, pens in the pocket, well-worn black leather shoes. His hair was slightly disheveled and his requisite beard streaked with gray. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. The girl, on the other hand, was upbeat, respectful, dressed in jeans and a pink shirt. Her hair was tied back in a tight bun. She smiled frequently and her face had no creases or lines. Perfect youth.

They both had Apple laptops. They both had paper notebooks. The man was thumbing through a planner. The girl was taking delicate, extensive notes. There were long periods of quiet when they worked, followed by five or ten minutes of chatting. I soon quickly realized what was going on.

The girl was preparing for a physics test. He was tutoring her. Whether he was her teacher and they were meeting at the library extracurricularly, I couldn’t tell. I could only catch every other word or so, and I was doing work of my own. Maybe he was a hired tutor. But he was prepping her for a major test. Does physics have some sort of L-SAT or something? It’s been so many long years I don’t remember.

He advised her to practice under a time restraint, to take notes when reading the problem, to be aware of certain tricks that might be written into the problems. He quizzed her every now and then: “What is momentum?” “What is little-g?” “Would these forces cancel each other out? Why or why not?” I got the impression she was taking a practice test online.

She seemed to answer most problems correctly. This elicited nice little “very good”s from him. When she missed something, it wasn’t a blatant error, just an answer that wasn’t specific enough, and he would quietly guide her to the bull’s-eye.

He did warn her to stay at her level, not stray into higher physics. This baffled me. Initially I thought she was a high school student, but perhaps she was in college? Hard to tell, as very quickly it got quiet at that table and she went hard to work. I got the strong impression she was very willing to work hard, as she had no doubt been working at a high level all ... whatever the period of time she was studying physics.

In the two years I studied Physics at Seton Hall, in a class of about twenty or twenty-five of us, there was only one woman. The math classes had a couple, as did the introductory physics classes, these were probably requirements or electives. But when I got to electronics and modern physics and such, it was just that one girl and twenty or so of us guys. I remember her because in the summer lab she had unshaven legs.

Anyway ... go Indian girl! Ace that test! We crossed paths for three hours one day and you didn’t know it, but I wish you the best. Hopefully, when my two little ones are your age, they will attack some science with heart and soul. (Note: Little One told me for the first time earlier today she wants to be a veterinarian.) I will tutor them to the best of my ability, even if it goes as far as me having to learn an entirely new subject.

Go Indian girl!