Sometimes I am uncomfortable with my major

I was walking back to my apartment today, past the dorms that are being torn down. The project fascinates me, and I stopped to take some pictures. The sun was out--that beautiful, evening sun--and as I took my pictures the workers were packing up and going home. Some Latinos were duct taping a salvaged desk or bookshelf on top of a car--with the sound of the tape ripping off the roll.

They were chattering in Spanish. That's my major, I thought. I am studying your language. I do it in a university classroom, where una güera simpática who speaks with the zeta teaches us how to stage seventeenth-century plays. I study their language, I thought. And it has nothing to do with them.