Hannah’s got the grad school blues and only one person can bring a spark back to her life. See what happens when things don’t go as planned in our Girls recap.

The state may be home to the Field of Dreams, but Hannah is having a hard time making the baseball magic of Iowa rub off on her writing. The apartments are huge, the campus is sprawling, and the thoughts of Hannah’s fellow writing partners are unfiltered. With all the fresh air and fresh perspectives, Hannah’s suddenly hit with the realization that she may not be the impactful writer she thought on tonight’s Girls season 4, episode 2, “Triggering.”

Acceptance into the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, a two year graduate writing program, is nothing to snuff at. But everyone who was accepted to the program showed the same promise in their writing submissions. From Hannah’s first class, however, it appears that her fellow writers are more open to feeding their work to the critics. Hannah’s first share goes less than smoothly when her audience finds it hard to separate Hannah’s real life from her fiction and critique honestly.

Hannah’s tendency to internalize her criticism hints that this program may not be right for her. As her fellow classmate deAugust points out, this is only the first of many workshops her work will be subject to. It’s a process, and this idea that her writing is instantaneously going to affect everyone who reads it will only hurt her more. She finds this out when she later accuses another classmate of being a survivor of abuse, giving her work more credit for affecting people than it deserves.

“You can’t go to everyone’s house and defend your work. It’s important to know how your work comes across to a reader.”

Meanwhile, Marnie refuses to offer up any intel about Adam, and Iowa’s dead zone for cellphones leaves Hannah with no option but to use a pay phone to call Shosh and her parents. However, Scandal and an intense game of Scrabble take precedence over Hannah’s ancient ways of communication and emotional upheaval.

Enter Elijah. Hannah’s saving grace strikes again when she needs him most. One text of distress was all he needed to jump on a plane and leave New York for a new adventure. Although Hannah only sees Elijah’s presence as a way to benefit her, Elijah’s motives for being there are completely self-serving as well.

An undergrad house party until the wee hours of the morning leaves Hannah blue, but in a new way. Paint wrestling her aggression out and partying all night long will not solve all of her problems, but the comfort of a friend to share the walk of shame home with certainly helps.

Stray Observations:

•The bat in her apartment offered some levity to an otherwise pity party episode.

•deAugust is the perfect anti-Hannah. We hope he sticks around for more.

Watch Girls season 4, episode 3, “Female Author,” Sunday, January 25 at 9:00 p.m. ET on HBO.