Am I an ESL student?

The other day, as I left my Computer-Assister Reporting class, I found myself marching down the stairs in step with the professor who teaches that class. It was an awkward moment - I've never spoken to him outside of class, and was not sure whether to try to make conversation or continue on silently. I decided on the former, especially since he kept glancing my way, as if expecting me to say something.

"I think I'm starting to get it," I said, referring to what we were learning in the class. Now, this might seem like a strange thing to say out of the blue, but I've been a little confused in that class, and he knew it, so it didn't startle him too much.

"Well. . ." he ventured. "That's good."

I decided to plunge ahead. "Yeah, I know. I think I just needed some practice. Sometimes, the problem was that I'd look away from what you were doing, and then I wouldn't know what to do and then not be able to keep up after that. But now, I get it more, so I can figure it out."

"Hmmmm," he said. Then, perhaps sensing that that wasn't enough, and he needed to express more sympathy for a struggling student, he plowed on. "Well, if I had to learn all this in a second language, I would have a hard time too."

It took a second for that comment to sink in. When it did, it took another one for me to react, to decide whether to be angry or amused. It's been a while since I have received comments on my "surprisingly good English", and while I used to laugh and shrug it off before, I was shocked to find that the comment bothered me more than it ever had.

Not knowing how to respond, I continued walking down quietly. Sensing the awkward silence, he seemed to realize that what had been intended as a sort of compliment had somehow gone awry. "Or is it your third or fourth language?" he stumbled on.

Now I felt a little sorry for him. "Well," I said, "I speak a couple of other languages, not very well. But English is more like my first language. I've been speaking it almost all my life and know it better than my own language."

"Oh," he said. "But still. . ." He gave up and changed tactics. "I know a little Russian," he went on. "But only the bad words."

I laughed politely.

Mercifully, we'd reached the outside of the building by now, and we both beat hasty retreats in opposite directions after hurried goodbyes.

As I walked home, I played that conversation, and my reaction to it, over in my mind. I generally laugh off incidents like this, but I was shocked at the anger I had felt at his assumption that I had difficulty understanding English because my accent is not American. Is it because I have become more insecure about my own identity? Or because I expected better from a professor at Columbia University - and a New York Times reporter, no less? Or was it simply because I have become more sensitive - and less forgiving - in the time that has elapsed since my college days? Or perhaps a mix of all three?

I feel like I did overreact, but I also think that, especially in today's increasingly globalized world, people like me are more entitled to become angry at assumptions like this. And people like him, especially reporters (that part probably annoys me more than anything else) need to stop putting people in boxes and labeling them based on the way they look or speak.

I had the same class again yesterday, and perhaps because I'm finally getting what we're learning, or perhaps because of a determination to show him that I am not lacking in English skills, I found myself speaking up a lot more - both answering and asking questions more boldly than I have done so far. So I guess some good came out of that:-)

But it will be a while before I forget this incident, and my own surprising reaction to it.