Finals are next week, grades go in the following week, and I am 99.99999% sure there is something between me (27F) and my TA (27M). Over the last few weeks (since he found out my age and that I'm not 18), there have been lots of glances, lots of "accidental" hand brushing when going over course material together, and lots of personal questions asked. We message a lot (at least daily), and our office hours chats tend to only sometimes be relevant to the course material because we get so sidetracked talking about books and our interests and our lives. Nothing has *technically* crossed professional bounds yet, but it definitely feels like there's more there than just a TA being nice with a student.
His body language is completely different around me than it is around anyone else in the class, even some of the girls I myself would consider pretty. When it's a group in office hours or we're in class, he's all business, closed-off body language, normal voice. But when it's just me, he does that thing where he "accidentally" flexes his muscles or keeps running his hands through his hair or puffs out his chest. His voice gets lower, too, like he's trying to sound, Idk, tougher? The only times I see men do that is at bars when they are actively trying to pick me up. Yesterday, during the last office hour of the semester before finals, he started saying something like "if you have any questions after the semester... about anything at all, even if it's totally unrelated to the class - I mean anything - you can always ask me" and then someone else walked in and he just kinda went back to being curt/business as usual. But it seemed to be inviting something more.
Around other students, he seems to share just the bare minimum. But he keeps telling me all about his life like where he went to undergrad, his family life, his favorite brother, where he lives and how the bus there takes forever and is always late, which cafes on campus he frequents. He catches up with me sometimes after class and asks just really inane questions about the weather or where my favorite bike rack is on campus or if I know any good spots to get Mexican food in the area. Things that seem to come off as excuses to talk to me. And it's not just that. He REMEMBERS the things I say and references them again days or weeks later. Like I'll casually mention I tried a place on Main Street or whatever and it wasn't very good, and he'll be like "yeah, so I was out the other day and my friend suggested we go to that place on Main Street, but I remembered you said it sucked and so we didn't go there!" Or I'll have forgotten a pen one day, and he'll bring extra pens the next day "in case anyone in the class forgot" (but all while clearly looking at me). He knows my likes and dislikes after I share them, and it's like??? What???
I feel like I'm going insane. Like, this cannot all be in my head, right? These behaviors are definitely not typical interactions between TAs and students, are they? Anyway, once term ends, the university won't care what we do because we're just two humans who will never interact in any professional capacity again (we're in totally different departments). So, I want to make a move. The problem is, the only place to make a move is university email (neither of us are big social media users). I don't have his number, obviously, and there are no more office hours to chat. I'm thinking I could send an email once finals are over, saying I enjoyed the class/his teaching style, and I'd love to keep in touch. He offered to meet one-on-one with me to give me advice on grad school at some indeterminate time in the future, so maybe I can work that in there somehow and say I'd be happy to find a time that works for him? I want to leave it open, but I don't want to explicitly cross any boundaries and then have that paper trail on university servers.
Any advice for how to navigate this? What can I say? Thank you.
TL;DR - I like my TA and I think he likes me too. The semester is nearly over, so how can I ask him out once it is?
Submitted November 24, 2021 at 10:06AM by throwaway-0943 https://ift.tt/3l399Iz
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