I came into class two feeling fairly confident. I had done my dailies, I had a handle on making rectangles, triangles, and circles. I could successfully change the background color of the screen. I could make cutesy animals, even ones with black oval pupils inside their definitively round eyes. And for this, I was proud of myself.

But class two was – in a word – overwhelming. I felt myself trying to simultaneously listen and look and act (and typing this now that seems like a lot, except that I can normally do all three of those things in class without issue). I tried to accept the fact that if I didn’t understand what a variable was, maybe I could grasp what a function was, but if one depended on the other, then what? Being able to move on, without “getting it,” is a fairly common move of mine (one that brings back shudder-inducing memories of Critical Theory). But somehow – in this class – that move feels different.

Maybe it’s because I have to understand in order to move on. I can’t press forward until I’ve mastered step one. It’s not like if I don’t get Kant now, I’ll have the chance to understand him later (and maybe better and/or differently) when I read Heidegger. I have to move linearly, progressively, not cyclically, and that is perhaps one of the things that feels strange to me.

And then there’s this reversal from the traditional course, where you read, figure out as much as you can on your own, work it out in class. The script is flipped: figure out as much as you can on together, work it out on your own. And the figuring it out together can indeed cause a kind of anxiety – especially when the person in front of you is making houses with colors (colors!) and another person is actually volunteering an answer that is actually correct (how dare they). So there’s a weird lag, a sense of delay that is inherent to this practice, where my comprehension has to – rather awkwardly and ploddingly – catch up to my initial shock and awe.