Dori

My self-confidence was already shaky when I entered grad school. My girlfriend just broke up with me and now graduate school was looking scarier than expected. My first seminar was a round-table discussion on learning theory. At the first meeting I was given a topic, a partner and a week to prepare a lecture. The topic was artificial intelligence, something I knew absolutely nothing about. Neither did my partner Dori, a cute little blond just out of UC Santa Cruz. Our first study session became kind of a ‘date’. We were sitting in her living room when she goes: “I’m bored”, immediately slips out of a one-piece summer dress and puts on a bathing suit with me sitting there trying to act like nothing out of the ordinary is going on. We headed for the beach.

The following week I didn't know any more about artificial intelligence than before …and Dori elected me to be the presenter. I was terrified. I mention this to Nelson the day before and discover he’d been a cryptologist in the service (he looked like a hippie now). He proceeded to draw a flowchart showing me how a computer mimics trial-and-error learning. I replicated the flowchart on the board the next day and discovered how much smarter everyone else was than me. They launched into a forty-five minute discussion and I learned something about artificial intelligence. I still felt kinda' stupid though.

Meanwhile my dates with Dori were getting weird. When things got intimate she’d freeze, sit up straight and throw me out. I took it personally, wondering if she saw through me to my confidence deficiency. I decided to take a break. Two weeks later she calls and invites me to dinner at her parent’s house …and I spend the evening listening to a lively conversation between her and her father. I wasn't included and whenever her mother tried to say something ...Dori would go: “Mom! You’re such a moron” and tell her to shut-up. It was uncomfortable and afterwards I decided to re-commit to taking a break.

Two weeks later she calls and asks me if I’d come over and spend the night, platonic- like  …she  didn’t want to be alone. In the meantime I'd been seeing Dr. Russell, a University Psychologist, about my lost confidence. He gives me an intelligence test showing that I’m no dumber that anyone else around here. Then he asks how things are going outside school. “Kinda’ weird” I say and tell him the 'Dori story'. He laughs and goes: “I think she has father-issues.” I shudder and go: “No way ...that's not a real thing ...is it?” He tells me it’s more common than people think … he laughs again and goes: “He probably woke up one morning to find her sucking his dick.” I walked away realizing what Dr. Russell was trying to tell me ...stop making everything about me!

Then came the morning Dori’s father shows up at 5:00 am. I hear her scream: “What are you doing here?” He says he came to see his little girl. “Get out!” she shouted. She prepares coffee and asks me to walk with her to a nearby elementary school where she works. We walk in silence. I never saw Dori after that. She dropped the seminar and didn’t return my calls. Her roommate told me she'd moved out. I hope I played a small role helping her more on. I learned more in four weeks of graduate school than four years of undergraduate study …and I hadn't opened a book yet.

Dori Barnett Ed.D (2011)