Overheard in Philosophy Hall

Tenured professor: You look happy, you’re dancing!

Young-ish associate professor: I feel so much better. I just avoided giving out my first C.

Aw!

Umm

Look at “possibly related posts.”

Hm. Interesting. In fact, appalling. Thank you, WordPress, for that gem.

Meanwhile, it’s 4 a.m. and I’m home in GN dealing with major technical difficulties re this philo paper. The saga continues.

Ew

I’m sitting in Lerner, editing my paper, in a really comfortable chair.

Here is what is not so comfortable: to my right, a grown man sits in front of his computer, eating sushi with his hands. Worse, though, is his soup. He is wielding a HUGE cup of noodle soup and sipping atrociously. Now, I’m not one to call people out on their manners, but this is beyond acceptable. Every time he lifts his spoon to his mouth, I cringe in anticipation of the slurp. Slurp slurp slurp. Actually, I’m not sure why the word is slurp. Because when he does it it’s more like “thhhhlrp, thrlp thlrp thlrp thrlp.” In that frequency. One long one followed by several shorts.

Disgusting. And preventing me from focusing.

you know you’re in trouble when…

On my phil of lit paper:

me: So this topic sounds okay to you, right?

My mother, who majored in philosophy: Sure, but what’s philosophical about it?

AH. Happy mother’s day indeed.

In Butler, a waste land of sorts.

After a lovely outdoors lunch with Dan, the library is looking much dimmer.

Especially since the only place I could find a seat was by the window on the sixth floor. No outlet. The desk is positioned at a weird angle, so my arms are hurting already.

And oh, the view. A room with a horrible, disgusting view. Directly in front of me is a dirty window with a sign, advising all those inside to keep the windows shut due to noise and dust and “tar smells.” Yum. Immediately beyond this window is a red-brick wall, dotted with older white stones. Beyond that is a green (not copper) roof with horizontal slats that I cannot identify. To the left is the wall of Carman, and we all know what that looks like—from here, some tacky motel. And it took me a full 15 minutes to find this seat.

So here I am, procrastinating still.