"I don't like that man. I really must get to know him better."

So said Abraham Lincoln. He was right.

The first day of my writing class, I made a decision. I decided not to like my teacher. I had every reason in the world to dislike her. She was mean, she spoke formally and expected us to do the same, I was bored to tears all the way through every class, and it was hot in her classroom.

My eight classmates, with an unspoken consensus, seemed to agree with me. We went to class only because we were required to, we dreaded handing in our homework, and it was all any of us could do to make it through to the end of the hour awake.

Then two weeks ago, I made a mistake. I missed class. It was an honest mistake. Thinking that class started at two o'clock, I was sitting outside in the hall at 1:55, ready to go in as soon as the previous class got out. To my surprise my classmates filed out of the room, asking me where I had been for the last hour.

Feeling bad that I had missed class, and knowing that our group of nine was small enough that she could not have failed to notice my absence, I went in and volunteered to make the absence up by staying for the next section of the same class. She said I was welcome to join her next class, and I, regretting my offer, sat down for a long hour of torture.

What I saw in that hour amazed me.

The two o'clock section had liked the teacher from the very beginning. They had every reason to like her. She's a very good Arabic writer, and expects a lot of her students. She is very willing to help her students learn the complicated ins and outs of Arabic grammar, and the niceties of Arabic personal and business correspondance. She's lived in Jordan all her life and is anxious to see her students learn all they can about Jordanian customs. She likes laughing when someone jokes, and she is always ready to answer questions.

I discovered that I had a friend I didn't know about it. I realized that I liked liking her better than I liked disliking her, and since then she has become a valuable ally to me in my sometimes-impossible battle against the sheer vastness known as Arabic. She's brought her husband and son with her to class a couple of times, and I've discovered that they are just as anxious and willing to help as she is.

I'm glad that I went to the wrong class and discovered that I had made the wrong judgment.

Next time I meet a man I don't like, I hope I remember to waste a lot less time getting to know him better.