During physics class today, I figured out what I wanted to write about.

My physics professor is an old, white-bearded Russian man—quite possibly Soviet, too. He rolls his r’s with magnificent flair. I only find it magnificent because I cannot do it; meanwhile, other students on the train casually unleash absurdly long trills in the middle of conversation… Fine, you win. His hearing is not very good, so when someone answers a question in the enormous classroom, he has to jog all the way over to their seat before he can make out the words, even when the hundreds of people present have fallen unusually silent. Yes, the classroom might as well be an auditorium. It is packed, and almost nobody makes noise unless necessary.

In our very first class, the professor announced that attendance would not be taken. Armed with this knowledge, I happily used the fifteen-minute break after my previous class to squeeze in a TB screening at the Activity Center. By the time I arrived fashionably late, nearly every seat in the front was occupied, forcing me to retreat to the unfamiliar rear, by the window. (Fine, there was no window. I just wanted to make the joke.)

I have to admit, the view from the back really is expansive: everywhere I looked, “young classmates in the glorious prime of life.” Wait, no—someone was asleep in the corner. As the professor calmly worked through high-school physics, my mind began to wander. What, exactly, are the differences between large classes and small ones?

Wow, what a brutally forced transition. An all-purpose opening like that would have guaranteed a rewrite back in my Omnibus-essay days. Unfortunately, this is Sojourner’s Diary, and in Sojourner’s Diary, Zhuge Tianyao calls the shots! Besides, I only planned the beginning and the ending. I never thought about the transition. Just make do with it—assuming anyone is reading.

Having grown up in small classes, I became accustomed to dealing with thirty-odd classmates every day. Looking back, most of them probably knew me only as “that Jiahao from Class Three,” but at least I had made a name for myself. Thanks to the internet’s rapid development and my habit of occasionally reorganizing my WeChat contacts, I still remember more or less everyone’s names. At the Gao family, needless to say, I could recite the entire round-of-sixteen bracket from memory. (It was not, in fact, a tournament bracket.) At Peninsula International School, even though there were only about thirty students in my entire grade, I lived up to every expectation as student-council president by failing to learn all their names. In hindsight, I am ashamed. (…Then again, I probably cannot attend any reunion in the foreseeable future, so perhaps this is no longer a problem?)

Once I entered university, class sizes grew dramatically. LETU was still alright: only classes such as IEP and physics were particularly large, and the same general cast of students appeared everywhere. Meet a few of the outgoing ones and the six-degrees rule could connect you to practically the whole campus. At UTD, only today’s writing class has fewer than fifty students.

I. Am. Doomed.

Anyone who knows me knows there are two things at which yours truly has always been catastrophically bad: remembering names and recognizing faces. Unfortunately, I have stumbled over that exact hurdle again, and again, and again. I have tried my hardest to greet everyone around me with extrovert energy, but as everybody knows, a computer-science department may have no room for idlers, yet every one of its students keeps their powers carefully concealed. Under these conditions, the number of classmates with whom I have successfully formed a connection this week is—somehow—zero!

Of course, there have been plenty if merely exchanging names counts. But as mentioned above, you can tell me your name and I still won’t remember it! Amid my lamentations, I have also begun wondering where large classes truly fall short—and what hidden advantages they might offer.

The first disadvantage is obvious: the professor does not know every student. In fact, across this entire first week at UTD, today’s writing class was the first to call roll. This practically forces students who genuinely want to learn to spend some of their free time composing emails to professors, camping outside office doors, arriving early and staying late to queue up with questions, and actively participating in class. Hmm. Everything I just listed sounds like what a good student should be doing anyway. Yet the sad truth remains: apart from those methods, you can sit in class and listen carefully and still learn almost nothing.

Ah, my stop. I will finish this tomorrow. Let us imitate the tokusatsu shows I have been watching and make it a two-parter. (manual dog-head emoji)