All through this first week of spring semester, I was reminded of the brief summer term that comes before the actual semester in Taiwan. When I was studying there, I remember my dad joking that its purpose was to "collect students' hearts," to bring them back to focusing on academics. I kind of wished I had that interim period when, on Monday, my insurrectionary brain was still in winter break mode and not wanting to come back from greedily lapping up leisure books.
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they capture hearts and string them on necklaces. kidding, kidding. this is from etsy. happy valentine's day!
I made myself a deal: finish homework, reply to letters that need replying, and do some much-needed laundry - then read for fun. And some of these things happened (the letters, not so much; sorry). I finished A Long Way Gone, which I had been meaning to read even before going to see Ishmael Beah speak at a convocation at the beginning of fall semester. In part, I credit a lot of the free time I had, and the reading I got to do because of it, to not having my computer charger (the internet being my main conduit to time-leeching activities, clearly). This was due in turn to a lost/delayed luggage fiasco, which has since been resolved (thankfully), but not before causing a) all my electronics to die slow, painful deaths and b) me to look like a homeless waif because the shirts I wore were starting to look suspiciously similar from day to day.
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i admit i'm partial to uk covers...
At the end of this slow spiral into an analog, tech-less life insanity, [redacted; but it rhymes with "pelican"] Airlines deigned to actually bring me my luggage, albeit for a fee. Safety and Security's Officer Tuck went to great lengths to try and save me that fee; chivalry is not dead. At random times, random people at Oberlin have tended to catch me off guard with genuine, all-around niceness. Case in point: when I joined Old B last year, I didn't know a single person, but co-opers would come up to me and say hi or invite me to eat with them.
This semester I'm eating in Pyle, which is incredibly convenient because I live just upstairs from it. I was going to take a few pictures of the food (there was some amazing focaccia a little while ago, and chocolate cupcakes, and coconut cake with lime icing) but it tends to disappear before I get around to it. In any case, it's always a plus to eat in a dining hall that is reminiscent of Hogwarts' Great Hall. At the front, instead of Dumbledore's podium, there is something that looks rather like Dumbledore's beard. I am informed that it is a mushroom slowly devouring a large meal of paper.
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yes, it looks kind of like that. no offense to Dumbledore.
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Coming up next: more on classes, once add/drop ends and my indecision resolves itself.