8 a.m. The clock alarm does not stop ringing. Where on Earth did I put my clock?? And why did I set it? Oh, god. It is true. It is the engineering day.
The day started this way. It is almost impossible for me to study at home. I always end up staring at startling beauty of the white ceiling, until I decide to do something a little more useful, like playing with my cat, as it seems that studying is out of question.
That's why I decided to go to the engineering university of Ancona with my boyfriend, and see if the lessons in double-Dutch would eventually inspire me to start studying. Actually, it did work. A miracle! It seems impossible, but when I am listening at something totally unknown, my attention fades very soon. For this reason, the only effect an analysis lesson has on me is that watching at all those people studying makes me want to do the same.
It was an interesting experience, really. I have never felt so inadequate in my whole life, but actually enjoying it. Nearly every boy from Ancona aged between 20 and 28 was there. No girl, or at least almost any. If a girl passed in the hallway (a supernatural occurrence), a sudden head movement spread among boys, and it made me think of a documentary I saw about woodchucks. I clearly remember a sequence showing of a huge group of woodchucks swiftly turning their head while they all pointed at the same prey. Stunning correspondence.
The most hilarious scene of the day lasted a whole hour: as I arrived late to the mathematics lesson, I had to sit at the bottom of the classroom, alone. Never again. Shame on me. All the boys sit in front of me passed the entire hour whispering “funny” things at each other's ears and staring at my directions with vacant eyes and a naïve smile. Like there were no women alive in the entire world except of me. How absurdly does a boy's head work!
I think that if a scientist had to led a psychological survey among men, about how they behave and what they spend their life talking about, he would just have to walk through that university and listen to them chatting. If they weren't studying, the most discussed subjects would be...football and sex, of course. From time to time you could even assist to a talk about current politics news, but it would not happen so frequently. I really felt as I had leaked into another world.
Eventually, at the end of the day I succeeded in catching a little glimpse of what happens in a man's head. That is, I understood why they can possibly understand something like “to major a function with a power of T”, or enjoy studying in a cube made of glass and steel and define it “structurally fascinating”, or even celebrate when the solution of an expression is an “I” with a roof. It happened when my boyfriend showed me an I-phone application which transforms functions in 3D graphics. The largest and most impossible expression I had ever seen, once put in a graphic, had the shape of an hearth. How different do we are.
Note: ask to Coke sellers why on Earth do they only put Light Coke in engineering vending machines.
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