Quote of the day

"What graduate students could do, organized crime could also do."

- seen in the NY Times

one more fun fact about me

the fabled depths of Firestone

So ever since I got here (and even before I got here) I have been hearing stories about how there are rare books in the stacks that you can still check out and take to your room, shockingly enough.

And indeed, today at long last I ran across some 16th-century and 17th-century printed books in the stacks. They were a bit dilapidated (one might say they looked a bit miffed at not having been transported into Special Collections), but it was quite a thrill to see them sitting there, rubbing . . . spines with perfectly ordinary 20th-century books on the shelf.

I'm not going to tell you where they are, because you might try to steal them before I do! (Just kidding.)

dinner #2, paper #2

My first research paper was approved this afternoon, which I am EXTREMELY happy about. But unfortunately my second research paper isn't doing all that well, because I'm not sure that what I'm arguing makes sense. Generally when I can't get any farther with a paper it's because I'm not convinced that what I'm arguing makes sense, and the more I struggle with it the less convinced I am, and finally the best thing to do is cut my losses, scrap the draft entirely, and start over from scratch. But this is now the third version I've tried to write. It's very frustrating.

Anyway, I was tired of fussing over the paper, so I went to dinner at the dining hall, and then I went out for bowling with Renee and Julio and Vera and Hana. Unfortunately when we got there we found there were about a hundred (no exaggeration) high school kids in line before us. We gave up and decided to go to the Cheesecake Factory in New Brunswick instead, where I had my second dinner of the evening (I thought I had eaten a reasonable amount of food at dinner...but after four hours I was hungry again).

Hopefully we will get to go bowling some other time soon. Maybe on Buck-a-Bowl or Bowlapalooza night?

friends and ice cream

Last night I was pretty much freaking out about all the work that needs doing, so fortunately Vera and Renee came by my room for a break from paper-writing, bringing with them large quantities of ice cream. After tea and ice cream I felt much better, got back to work for a few hours, and then sent out the latest revision of one of my research papers. Now I'm back in the library.

It's a drizzly grey day, complete with freezing rain, which is really fortunate, because it makes me not want to leave my carrel. Also I am trying to keep in mind Renee and Vera's bribe, which is that if I complete another revision by Sunday we can go bowling on Sunday night. Bowling! I haven't gone bowling since I was at Berkeley.

running as fast as you can just to stay in the same place

Tonight is one of those (many) down-the-rabbit-hole nights when academia seems like a foreign land with odd rules and stranger people, and I feel like I might wake up any moment, frantically shaking a queen into a kitten.

I keep trying to write this paper, and the more I read the less I know, and the more time I spend with my draft the shorter it gets. I write and revise, and the things I wrote seem irrelevant and so I delete them or push them down into the footnotes, and go off and read some more, and try to write something else. It's an awful endless loop.

I think I was really meant to have one of those desk jobs where you just push paper around all day, because I don't seem to have the brains to do anything else.

Thanksgiving all over again

Thank goodness, the dining hall reopened tonight. I was so happy! I got there a few minutes after 5 (when it opened) and there were already around 20 people there. I went and sat with Leo, Ryan, & Klaus--later Berk, Mette, & Eleanor showed up. I was just so grateful to be fed, and have people to sit with (my birds are good company, but not for a week at a time...) and on top of it, the food was actually quite good tonight: chicken vegetable soup, turkey cutlet, honey carrots, & rice. And I had rocky road ice cream for dessert. It really made my day.

Last night I went to the PSDS New Year's Procrastinators' Ball in Philadelphia. It was great. That guy Bob was there, the one who reminds me so much of David--he's a funny, super dancer and professional musician--and we danced maybe 10 songs together over the course of the evening, which was quite a treat. (When I say he reminds me of David...well, he even has a chicken routine! His partner gets to play a swan, though.)



I was expecting to be wallflowering most of the night, so it was a pleasant surprise that I had such a fun time.