Small Fry

by Lisa Brennan-Jobs

At Harvard, I decided to major in English. During my junior year, I took a seminar on Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, taught by a Chaucer scholar from England with charming, uneven teeth and tufts of white hair in his ears. At some point, Criseyde has left Troilus, but Troilus can’t seem to forget her. “It makes Troilus seem so pathetic,” I said confidently during the seminar, “that he can’t get over her.” “No,” the professor said, looking at me with a kind gaze. “His strength is that he can hold on.”