That Obscure Object of Desire:

So you're having coffee with a friend at Algiers and this incredibly attractive man walks in, holding a copy of Pavese--in the original. He's not wearing a baseball cap, his jeans have been laundered within the past three months, and you think to yourself, "I could go for that." Two hours later, you head off to section and who happens to saunter into the room but the dreamboat from the cafe. But instead of sitting with the rest of the students, he walks up to the front of the class and introduces himself as your TF. Great. Now you'll be spending the rest of the semester biting your fingernails in the throes of unfulfilled coital agony.

The relationship between a TF and his or her student is ambiguous, at best. Sure, TFs are supposed to be your mentors, the people for knowledge, but considering that some TFs are just plain hot, it's no wonder that students start to entertain other, less wholesome attitudes toward them.

"Alpha", a junior, says that in her first year she had a Shakespeare TF with "the best arm muscles I have ever seen. He was really hot." "Beta", a junior taking her pre-med requirements, confides that during a lab, her physiology TF "rolled up his T-shirt and started flexing and saying, 'Well, the extensor works this way and see how when I flex the bicep..."' Beta is sure that he liked being able to show the class that he was a big, buff guy."

Apparently aware of the potentially volatile chemistry between TF and student the administration actively seeks to prevent classroom romances from occurring. "Delta," a Course Assistant for a Math class, describes "several seminars that Harvard mandates you go to [when you are a TF], which concern almost entirely the relations between the students and the TF". In them, 'we are given specific scenarios with the corresponding specific university policies." For instance, "a TF should never call up a student unless they have called and asked to be called back, and then the full conversation can only be about issues related to the class." So, if your TF does not seem to be available when you call for the third time to invite him/her out to coffee, (s)he just may be talking to some university administrator about the best way to handle the situation.

Indeed, situations between TFs and students can get complicated. "Gamma", a first-year, found out that the person she had broken up with just days before the term started was the only TF in a class she wanted to take. "For the first week, it was a big mess," she says. Luckily, everything worked out when "he withdrew as a TF so that I could take the class comfortably."

"Delta," a Course Assistant, found himself in an awkward position. Although there were several men and women in the section he was leading whom he would have liked to be friend, to do so would have been a breach of University policy. Now, after the class has ended, he feels that it is almost impossible to change the relation he established with his students. "Once you establish yourself, once you have said 'I'm your CA and we are not going to be friends, we can be friendlybut we can't be friends,' it seems impossible to change that."

Other TFs, though, have no problem becoming close friends with their students, sometimes even throwing keg parties for them at the end of the class. Their students, however, maintain that they are very good teachers and that the boundaries of the relationship are clearly set. For them, it's your everyday TF-student relation, with a lot of beer on the side. "Epsilon", another sophomore, says he has become very good friends with his tutorial leader, to the point that "she talks to me about her boyfriend and I talk to her about my relationship." Although this doesn't make either one of them uncomfortable, since it is an out-of-classroom relationship in addition to the teacher-student one, he admits that "it is sort of weird that no one in the class knows that we are like best friends."

Although some students manage to break through the TF-student barrier, others don't tamper with it. And while love-lorn students may be frustrated by their unfulfilled longings, they can at least take comfort in the fact that their crush helps to keep them motivated. "Theta", a sophomore, says that she had a very strong crush on her match CA last year. As a result, she ended up going to every section, asking a lot of questions and turning in all her homeworks. "It got a bit ridiculous," she says. "I knew nothing could happen, so at one point I ran back to my room after section and wrote him a long letter, saying everything I felt." She never gave him the letter, and "if he ever suspected the way I felt, he was extremely professional about it." When asked about her feelings after the class ended, Theta says that when she ran into him again she "couldn't understand why I had such a crush on him. Maybe it was the power thing." Or maybe it was a psychological trick she played on herself in order to do better in the class. After all, she notes, "after doing all that work, I got the best grade I have gotten in math at Harvard."