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I  sorta expected it. I had colleagues who are taking their M.A. at the UP College of Arts and Letters so I asked about this prof.  What I got was, “Ah, terror yan! Pero magaling. Marami kang matututunan.” (Ah, she’s terrifying, but she’s really good. You’ll learn a lot.)

Ok, I actually have two demanding profs this term. I had another choice for a cognate at the UP-CSWCD (where I took up Gender and Sexuality) but even though that prof is good, she also requires a lot. When I say “a lot”, that means MORE than the required PhD readings. And PhD reading requirements are already four times as many as master’s reading requirements to begin with. Now do the math with this utterly conservative prof.  So yeah, I think I’m going to kill myself this semester.

I really didn’t have any other choice.  Now I am kinda regretting that I took the course. WD professors may be demanding with readings, but they didn’t have the aura that Dr. Terror Personified had.

My first entry into the FC building was scary. It was old. Like, mumu old old.  And not very female-friendly. The first sign of a comfort room you’ll find would have symbols for men. The female bathrooms are in the next building, at the CAL itself. Haller??? Men can pee on walls, so what gives???

The moment I entered the room, I was shell shocked to see that it was her office.  Her first greeting was, “Don’t you know how to knock?”

I apologized profusely because I honestly thought that it was a classroom. You don’t usually knock in classrooms, right?  She then explained something about that office, which kind of flew over my head because I was so nervous. When you confront a Pisces head-on, she fidgets in the water.

OMG. Tension everywhere since I was the earliest bird.  It was only after she excused herself that I was able to check my messages. Joyce was actually waiting for me outside Vargas Hall but that she had gotten my text that I had already gone into FC. Booohooohooo…I could’ve faced Dr. Terror Personified (DTP) with Joyce in tow.  She arrived five minutes later.  Then Jenny came. I had to tell her to silence her cellphone.

It took DTP a good 20-25 minutes to get back to us. That was how far the female restroom was. It was bad enough that the hallways are a mass of mazes! If zombies (or the mumus I could feel) were to attack, I could find myself trapped in an unexpected dead end after exhaustively running through halls and halls of circles. Images of my Parasite Eve game came to mind. Chrysler Tower anyone? NO SAVE POINTS.

All three of us, Joyce, Jenny and me, needed to pee. But our bladder froze in time. That was how scary DTP was.  In fact, Joyce said she lost calories just sitting in that class. Her pants were literally falling off. She also purposely did not tell the the professor that she already has a PhD in Literature and that this is her going to be her second PhD.  She was that scared that she’d withhold that kind of important information. And me? Before DTP asked me the perfunctory introductory questions, she began with, “Ah, the youngest in the class…”

That tone immediately sent warning bells in my head.  Remember that I had been very insecure about being the youngest in class since the beginning of my PhD studies? The memories of being interrogated about my youth came charging back and I stuttered (mentally noting my oral grammatical mistakes) all throughout DTP’s interview.

More warning bells rang with:

• I had a student who came from another college and I wanted him out of my class so I really made things hard. It turned out he was the best student. (Bea’s note: I really don’t want to be put to that kind of test.)
• I don’t know if you had heard, but a lot of students brand me “terror”.
• I had one class and out of 8 students only 3 passed.
• And when I say, “failed,” I mean they got 4.0 or 5.0. (Bea’s note: POWTA!)
• We will have mid term exams.
• If your seminar paper isn’t good, we might have finals.
• When can we schedule make-up classes?
• I expect you to have read the following by next week. (Bea’s note: We had to go to three libraries in order to find two of those books and the rest of them are still not available in any UP library.)

We also just found out why there were only three of us in that class and why we were all from UP-CMC. Where are the UP-CAL PhD students?  Can you hazard a guess?

So I went home, bought McDo for dinner (even though it’s supposedly bad for me to have it two nights in a row), and hugged my cat Kirara. I really really really needed comforting.