There's a professor

that I absolutely admire.

She just exudes confidence and is totally comfortable with herself, and you can tell that she loves what she does.  She's super down-to-earth, totally unpretentious, but she's literally a genius.  She's won crazy fellowships and awards . . . but she's so real.  She has this long mass of tightly coiled spiral curls and a nose ring that somehow, on her, comes off as understated and appropriate and not "young professorial rebel."  She always dresses professionally, occasionally brings coffee to class, and expects the best from us.

She arranged for a Dominicanyork performer to come to campus.  It's just awesome.  We read the performer's work, (it's basically choreopoetry), got a chance to see her in action yesterday evening at a university sponsored event, and now today, she's coming to our class so we'll have a chance to interact with her on a more personal level and ask questions about her work.  I'm just kind of in awe of the fact that my professor cares enough to want her students to have face time with someone we're reading and writing papers on for class.  My professor also invited me and a few others to have lunch with the performer and a few other professors before class today.  I'm totally nerding out.

I had a moment last night when I was talking to my professor and she was giving me more details about meeting for lunch today.  I wasn't planning on it (most of my moments happen unexpectedly) but I started tearing up when I told her that I think she's awesome, I appreciate her inviting me, and appreciate her making the effort to bring the performer here, etc. Ugh!  I'm such a baby . . . it's so embarrassing.  She was all like, "Stop! Now you're going to make me cry," and gave me a hug.  What is wrong with me?

I know she thinks of me as "cute."  I sit up front like a dutiful little nerd, actively participate in class discussion but often get tongue-tied because I get nervous when trying to express myself in Spanish (in front of my majority native-speaker classmates).  And now I've outed myself as a softie.  Awww, how cute.  How sweet.

I want to be that confident, I've-got-it-together woman.  Sometimes I am that woman.  But sometimes I slip back into that awkward little girl.  I guess I have to accept the fact that the little girl is always going to be there somewhere, no matter how old I get.