Status Updates From The Idiot

early days as of yet but i’m quickly and irrevocably falling in love with batuman’s style of prose — so svelte and delicate yet surprisingly meaty, able to fall softly from the page and still deal a great blow. the narrative itself is deceptively exciting, brimming with a veritable feast of literary, philosophical, and cultural references that are enjoyable without becoming suffocating.

Why are these students taking a beginner Russian class able to construct sentences about astrophysics and use the past perfect continuous tense? This is....odd so far.