I do this thing occasionally where I will be talking about something academic in class, and suddenly slip into this really colloquial voice, causing everyone, including professors, to laugh. To take some examples from today, I used the phrase "whatever, man" to describe the reaction of the Welsh people to the armistice at the end of World War I, and then in the next seminar I proposed that the purpose of the film we were discussing was to make the intended white audience say to themselves, "dude, that sucks for the aboriginals." I believe I also commented that the film was, "pretty much a downer all the way through."

This kind of thing was embarrassing enough back at UCSD where such phrases were at least part of the normal vocabulary of my classmates. But here, where even their slang sounds more formal than mine could ever be, I stick out like a sore thumb. An English student, talking about the same movie, would have probably said something like "Surely the film is meant to place the white audience member in the position of the aboriginal child, inviting a kind of compassion that, at the same time, borders on condescension." I can do the academic voice, you see. The problem is, I usually don't forget myself and start speaking in Californian unless it's something I feel strongly about. So while I'm dead serious, the rest of the room thinks I'm trying to make them laugh. Luckily they seem to find it charming or something. I would much rather win the approval of my peers through actual intelligence than by just being a novelty, but I am hesitant to stop doing anything that gets me a friendly smile from one of those terribly attractive young english guys. (like the subject and also the nationality, get it?!?!)

This has gotten me thinking about how it really must take a long time to fully lose an accent. That is why I refuse to forgive my Modernist Fiction professor. I don't care where you did your PHD or how long you have lived in London--people should not have to be subjected to hour-long lectures where people say things like "the ways in which modernism was a product of the technological advances of the time period," in a horrible, pretentious, annoying, half-American-half-British accent. It just should not be allowed. Pick a side, for the love!