Now you're the only one here who can tell me if it's true, that you love me, and I love me

Two weeks ago I finished teaching the first of two lecture courses that I got the opportunity to teach over the summer. My lectures are for an hour and a half every day, and each course lasts for five weeks. Apparently that's enough time for an unhealthy crush to develop. And this time I'm not talking about the one that I developed on my hottest student, I'm talking about the one that one of my students has on me.

About three weeks into the course I got an anonymous email. It was from a name that I didn't recognize, and it read "Can we go out?"

I didn't respond. Then a few days later I got another one from the same email address (which had a name that was not on my class roster - I checked). This one said "I hope you're not mad. Just think of it as a joke, ok? You're always joking around. Email me back, ok?"

I still didn't respond. A few days after that I got another email that said "What is DNA? You should email me back because this time it's about lecture."

I wrote back and said "No offense, but I haven't responded because I don't know who you are."

They replied "Fortunately, I'm one of your students."

I just left it at that. Then, a few days after the course ended a student showed up at my office. At first she said that she wanted to pick up her final exam, but that she had something else to ask me too. Then, after working to get up the nerve, she told me that she wanted to get to know me better than as a professor and wanted to know if we could go out on a date. Even with the emails that I had received, it completely caught me off guard. I didn't know what to say, and I could tell she felt stupid for asking, so I said that I guess there wouldn't be any harm in grabbing lunch sometime. That turned out to be a mistake. I was thinking that we could get a bite to eat, and then I could tell her that it would be a bad idea to see each other again. Instead I think it led her to believe that I was interested in her. I started getting a bunch of emails, she started hanging around my lecture so that she could see me before and after class, and she showed up at my office with brownies. I can't really blame her, because all of those things would be fine if we were entering into a relationship, and I think that in her mind we were. But it got to the point where it started to freak me out a little. You hear about it all the time, but I think it's the first time that I've been put off by someone coming on too strong.

We didn't go out for lunch. I told her that I felt awkward about the whole situation, and that the more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be a bad idea. I listed a few of the nicer reasons of why I didn't think we should go out, and kept some of the others to myself so as not to hurt her feelings. Thankfully, she understood, and didn't seem to take it too hard. Hopefully she'll have the confidence to approach the next guy she gets a crush on.

I was telling some of my friends about the whole situation the other night. I jokingly referred to her as my stalker. One of my friends had seen the emails, and had seen me talking to this girl, but I hadn't told him about the rest. As I was filling him in on the details we had the following conversation:

Friend 1: "I guess you found out who was sending you those emails then."
Me: "Yeah."
Friend 1: "Was it that little Asian girl who's come by the office to ask you questions?"
Me: "Yeah, that's the one."
Friend 2 (to Friend 1): "So you've seen this girl?"
Friend 1: "Yeah, I've seen her."
Friend 2: "Is she cute."
Friend 1: "No."
Friend 3: "If she was cute, he'd be calling her his new girlfriend instead of his stalker."