St. John's College
Annapolis, MD
Sunday, October 22nd, 2006

Funky Update

I'm surprised to see that this is the ninth week since I got here for sophomore year. Somehow time seems to go by like that at this school, or maybe just in general. The campus seems always to be the same. I imagine it's kind of like the old schools in Britain in that respect: the buildings just sit there, getting older and more mellow, being maintained and built around but never actually changing.

A lot of things are shared between Oxford, say, and St. John's. For example, we both have Senior Common Rooms! I was in the SCR for the first time yesterday, and what struck me the most about it was the smell: smoky and leathery, and decidedly chalky. Also, there were caps and gowns hanging on the wall (for academic emergencies?), which is distinctive.

Speaking of distinctive, I did laundry today and saw someone's bottle of detergent, on which had been written:

"This is my detergent, so please don't use it.
Really, what would Kant say?"

Which is a perfectly intelligent thing to write on a bottle of laundry detergent around here. I forget sometimes that I go to a school that can boast perfect attendance in both junior math (they're on Newton right now) and a techno dance party.

So I sniffled and sneezed my way through the week, getting all my work done and maintaining my integrity to the greatest extent possible. I didn't miss any classes, of which I'm rather proud. However, this weekend has so far been a bit of a challenge. You see, I'm getting pretty good at having things I ask for show up in my life, so much so that I have to take "be careful what you wish for" seriously now. Yesterday, I wanted to 1) Finish my seminar reading, 2) Have someone to go shopping with me, and 3) Have free time.

How did that go? Well, I finished my seminar reading by noon. At one, a friend who lives in the dorm opposite mine asked if I wanted to go downtown with her to some new stores. Then the rest of the afternoon I had free to do whatever I wanted.

It was ridiculous! Completely ridiculous! Of course, it didn't go the way I imagined. In fact, after an hour or so of sitting at my computer, listening to music and reading comics, I started to think "...annnnnd this is kind of boring." Actually, this is a common issue with creating dreams, as I know many of you reading this have found. When our family went cruising a year ago, we created everything we needed to get off the dock, but nothing for how we wanted the cruise itself to go. I'm running into a situation rather like that now. My big dream of going to school here is now just my way of life. It's been realized so completely that I'm starting to look for other activities to keep me interested. I'm still busy, my time is taken up, but I know what to do. Even my new goals like "make more friends" and "have a healthy lifestyle" are being accomplished.

The fact is, I'm looking for adventure again. Well, as we just read in Matthew, "Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you."

And now, since this hasn't been a very entertaining update, I'll sign off with this little joke I heard earlier in the week.

Q:  "If you could be any enzyme, which would you be?"
A:  "I'd be DNA helicase. Then, I could unzip your genes!"

Ah, bio jokes. The real spice of life. Thanks for reading, everybody!

- Roxanne