As I’ve mentioned before, last school year the Korean foreign exchange student would visit my desk at least once a week to practice her English conversation (which was exponentially greater than the English abilities of the Japanese students). What this really meant is that every week for one or two hours I had to talk about the latest developments in her favorite TV show: Gossip Girl.

Now, I am not a fan of Gossip Girl. The latest reincarnation of Beverly Hills 90210/Melrose Place/The OC (which are all essentially the exact same show), Gossip Girl has the ability to immediately fill me with rage and frustration within the first 10 minutes of the show. Even the clothing and the fashion (which is very cool, I admit) is not enough to justify putting myself through the torture that is Gossip Girl. I’m fairly confident that I would enjoy self-flagellation more than watching this show.

However, when my student walked up to my desk and asked me how old I was when I lost my virginity, it was immediately clear that I was going to need to watch this show if I wanted to be able to talk about its representation of American culture without accidentally crossing over some invisible boundary of what constitutes an acceptable teacher/student relationship. At the very least, watching each week’s episode would help me anticipate the wacky questions that she would ask me. So, dear readers, when you picture me watching Gossip Girl alone in my apartment on my computer, I would like you to imagine a scenario similar to Malcolm McDowell’s behavioral-conditioning scene in A Clockwork Orange.

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