geeking out across the galaxy

DISCLAIMER: majorly non-fashion related post below..


wednesdays this semester are my hell days: class from 10-3, then 4-5, meetings in the evening, and work from 10-midnight.

today was particularly hellish, i attempted to stay up all night yesterday, finishing wuthering heights, writing a response paper on it, reading for my wgs class, and completing french homework, but then i passed out about halfway through my first task, and woke up at 9, leaving me about a half hour to write my paper, and rush to the library to get it printed before 10.

there was no food to be had all day. even my usually free 3 o'clock hour was taken up by office hours with my wgs teaching fellow.

but the silver lining of my long day, which isn't over, by the way, was my english seminar. the course is mandatory for my concentration and the title is literature and the mediated self. the class and readings are pretty interesting, but with only five students and a professor in class, it sometimes can be a bit daunting, a little bit of a drag at times (clocking in at two hours per class).

but today we had library tours for the purpose of showing us resources for future research papers, etc. etc. the first stop was widener, which of course is a grand, majestic hulk of a building, very immense and all that, but we sat in a seminar room while the librarian showed us online research tools, and i could barely keep my eyes open.

then the next stop was houghton library, which i had heard of but didn't know where it was or what it was for. turns out it's a stone's throw from lamont, where i work, and it just so happens to be the rare books and manuscripts library.

the building itself was so old-fashioned and welcoming (although the library itself isn't.. you have to have a specific purpose for being there, unlike my library, which is maybe one of the most social spots on campus. go figure.), and to see books that were made by gutenberg's printing press (!) blew my mind. but it got better.

in the emily dickinson room, they have her actual bureau, desk, and chair, which are so tiny, i can only imagine that she must have been a quite petite woman. and then our tour guide opened a closet and pulled out her fascicles, emily dickinson's own fascicles, written and bound by her own hand, and placed them on her own desk, and let us decipher her handwriting. i read emily dickinson's poetry in her own hand, on the very desk that she wrote it on! but it got better!

she placed three torn little books on a display case and told us to flip through them and see if we could figure out what it was. it was handwritten in pencil, the dates were in the late 1800s.. definitely a journal of some sort.. there were mentions of monkeys and trees and low lands and rivers, and maps drawn in margins.. turns out it was a journal that joseph conrad wrote on a trip to the congo. which inspired him to write heart of darkness.

i have flipped through joseph conrad's journal. and read emily dickinson's poetry on her own desk. and looked at keats' copy of shakespeare's works.

and that's what i came to this college for. not to be stressed out and depressed and frazzled all the time, but because it's older than dirt (or at least this country) and it's got history for miles. if i could do something like that every day, i'd be a much happier student.

anyway, file this under the scholarly chronicles. and now back to our fashionably scheduled programming.

veritas inlustrat,