What I used to be able to pass off as a bad summer has now potentially turned into a bad life.

Last night my train headed for The Land Of The Emotionally Mature took a sudden detour and stopped at I'm Going To Stand Outside My Apartment Building And Yell At My Mother Over The Phone About How My Life Is Miserable Junction. And I'll tell you one thing: it's not a cute little town.

I attempted to talk to Dr. Less Crazy before class yesterday in hopes to convince him that despite my shitty papers (which, by that point, I still hadn't gotten back and was still only assuming sucked big ol' balls), I'm actually smart! (I promise! Want to talk about Faulkner? I know you want to talk about Faulkner!) I told him that I was concerned about my performance in the class based on how I thought my papers were, and I hoped he'd give me some reassuring idea that I can come out of this class with a good grade.

Instead, he said, "Well, I haven't finished grading them, so why don't we just assume you did fine. And if you didn't, you can come back and talk to me."

And then he goes, "Is this your first quarter in graduate school?" That didn't particularly reassure me, since I was convinced that he was thinking the entire time about how I was a dumbass.

So I left his office just as frustrated as I was five minutes earlier. Then I had to go take a midterm for him, which I think I did well on, but who knows what he wants; he's not really giving me direction.

When I turned in my exam, he fished through the stack of papers to find my quizzes and paper. He kept flipping through them and then stopped; he looked up at me and squinted. "You know, I barely recognize you when you're wearing your glasses." I didn't have a response, since I ALWAYS WEAR MY GLASSES and it made me realize that he has no fucking clue who I am and, therefore, couldn't give two shits about how I do in the class. (This is the professor who is also from Virginia, who talked to me two weeks prior about how beautiful Saluda is (my response: "Isn't that where the regional jail is?") and how he used to eat a lot of oysters when he was a kid.)

After seeing my slightly below-average grade on the paper, I called my mom. Because, for some reason, I call my mom when I just can't take whatever life crisis I'm going through anymore, and usually a fight over something that neither of us have control over helps me get over it. And of course that's what happened. It'd been a while since I'd had to call her like that, and I ended up having a sort of Movie of the Week monologue about school, my job, my social life, my paranoia that nobody likes me, my depressing paycheck, and my homesickness. This all took place, by the way, in front of my apartment building, half a block from a major public boulevard, so I'm sure someone in my neighborhood sat at a window listening to "that crazy guy lose his shit outside."

I wish Judd Hirsch was here to help me figure things out. Do I have to go Lake Forest to find him?