On the last day, it snowed heavily.

My more-than-four-hour meeting with S turned out to be a painfully confessional and retrospective conversation. My emotional chair kept directing my attention to my embarrassed position as a foreigner/non-native speaker of English in the English dept. why i told her about my interest in Chinese lit, i didn't even remember. And then her question, something like "why did you want to do this, appearing--at least when you just entered the program -- so out of your comfort zone," brought such a piercing pain for a couple of seconds i felt i was going to faint right there in her office. she wouldn't know, even with her lengthy post-meeting email that tried to clarify both her and my thoughts, that i haven't been feeling discouraged by the brutal job market situation. no, that isn't the real reason. what i'm struggling with is precisely the choice i made nine years ago--to apply to "English" departments in the US. why am i doing what i'm doing? S's question pushed me back to where i was in that very first semester in AA, faced with overwhelming challenges that made me want to quit every day... In fact, she meant to remind me of the necessity of acknowledging my particular identity as a critic, which seems the only way to sharpen my argumentative voice.

but, somehow, what i got from her words was: well, i'd better go back to where i'm from.