I am not in general intellectually intimidated in class, and I certainly have not been in my time at Duke so far, but the population of grad students here is, I admit, beginning to overwhelm me a little. Clay and I are the only undergrads in Conservation and Development... and I would not mind that at all if I had taken classes in the subject recently, but no, everyone prattles along about CIDA and ICDPs and a slew of other abbreviations that mean nothing to me and I wonder if I'm not in over my head. I mean, Dr. Campbell is a wonderful professor and very engaging and not at all condescending to the undergrads but nevertheless one gets the feeling that one is the friend of a friend at a cocktail party where everyone mills around immersed in erudite chatter while all you can comment on is the weather or the niceness of ties. I even feel that it would help if I could remember some of the wonderful stuff I learned in 'A' level History about the IMF and the World Bank but all that has long since gurgled out of my head into the repository of Things I Once Knew. Perhaps I should have stuck in Rittschoff's class after all, even if it did mean two extra afternoons a week in class crushing snails and extracting pheromones. I don't know. I second guess myself too much.