Diners, Discourse, Dancing, Distance, in a word--October

If you're looking for a happening place in Chicago, I highly recommend the Newberry Library. In addition to fifteenth-century manuscripts and Jack Kerouac's letters, this majestic mansion houses seven pretty excellent undergraduates who are bleary eyed and excited. That's right, folks. We're writing our papers, and boy are we a fun crowd! From spontaneous dance parties to banana breaks on the front steps to youtube videos of dancing cats and snarky-messaged postcards depicting baby animals, we're finding all kinds of ways to not do our work.

Last week was the first week without class. For someone who relies on structure for everything, motivation has proven to be a bit of a struggle in this new schedule of structureless nothingness. And yet, it most certainly is not nothingness. I'm pretty much overdosing on gender discourse and the social constructs of womanhood in the Victorian era, and it's wonderful, but I have come to appreciate my liberal arts curriculum. It is very nice to spend my day focused on one project that is entirely mine, but there's also something refreshing and invigorating about alternating between race theory, economics (actually, there's nothing refreshing about economics--bad example), Toni Morrison's Sula, and the most recent ecological study. Perhaps it's my natural inclination towards multi-tasking, but I might be going a little crazy spending so much time entrenched in Mary Kingsley's West Africa. Good thing I'm breaking it up with lots of weddings and city viewing.

This past week I ventured into Wicker Park, potentially the most Kenyon-esque place in the city of Chicago. From coffee shops with organic muffins to more thrift stores than I can possibly handle (the Mt Vernon Goodwill doesn't have anything on these!), I felt especially nostalgic for the Yauger Road hill and a grilled cheese on focaccia in the library before the nerd bell at midnight. The nerd bell here rings at five. This most certainly is not Gambier.

I also have been sampling all of Chicago's diner food. I think I've pretty much decided to subsist entirely on fried food products and breakfast food. It's a survival tactic, and a delicious one at that.

So, though the stress has increased and the heat in 2 West has not, I am slowly achieving, in the words of Kingsley, "the thing a worker in any work most wants--the sense that the work was worth doing."