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The scene was one of shock, disbelief, and revelry as math concentrators all over campus celebrated the news that a teaching assistant in the department has the ability to speak English.
Jason Stevens '10 was one of three pre-registered students in the now completely filled section.
"I've taken a few math classes before, so I know how it works," said Stevens. "When I saw on Banner that the TA's name was Li Xu, I just thought, 'Oh, here we go again.'"
But when the section met for the first time, Stevens and the rest of the students were extremely surprised.
"The TA just walked in and was like, 'Hey, how's everybody doing?'" said Rebecca Ward '09. "I literally fell out of my chair."
When asked about the situation, Department Chair Jill Pipher said, "What? You must have the wrong department."
Xu, who is TAing for the first time at Brown, was somewhat surprised by the reception he received.
"I'm from Seattle. I won a spelling bee in ninth grade. I would even say I'm an above-average speaker of the English language, ipso facto the spelling bee," said Xu. "As such, I was pretty shocked, vis-a-vis they all had brought Mandarin-English dictionaries to a math section."
Going into the section, however, students were not optimistic, especially after two days of class with Professor Vladimirovich Radmonovic.
"He's up there saying 'wectors' instead of 'vectors' and 'calcaliss' instead of 'calculus.'" Stevens added. "It's not like I have any clue what's going on. And I was damn sure that section wasn't going to help the situation."
Section, however, has helped the situation.
"It's fantastic," said Jan Olsen '11, another student in the section. "I get to free up one of my course spots by not having to take Chinese for section on top of the Russian for lectures and the Korean for my weekly tutor."
