A friend of mine sitting next to me let out a little exhausted whimper, and I just stared at Chandra dubiously. I'd been up for most of the night re-reading and re-re-reading the many pages of Foucault we'd been assigned, and every time I thought I'd grasped what he was saying about power and discourse the threads fell apart again. The idea of wrangling with a brilliant yet egotistical French philosopher for two and half hours in our Contemporary Theory of Anthropology class teetered on the fine line of promising academic enlightenment or mental breakdown.

The class, after all, is one of those where it always feels like bits of my cerebral cortex are dribbling out of my ears when I leave. Apparently, in previous years the class discussions have actually led to people throwing books around the room in intellectual fits of passion. It's all monitored (heh, Foucault) by Chandra Bhimull, our professor, who's one of my very favorites at Colby but is also a woman who could probably kill us with her brainpower alone. Her weapon of choice is a particularly loaded question after we've made a comment in discussion - "Interesting," she'll say, her voice becoming softer, more reflective. "Say more." Cue us flailing around, sweating profusely, trying to come up with words and then realizing that our statement was grounded in a potentially fallacious life assumption. She does bring snacks regularly to class, though, which helps numb the mental throbbing.

I didn't finish my snack this week. I was too busy scribbling down notes, trying to follow and contribute to the train of thought. Midway through the class, everything picked up momentum, and we were getting closer and closer to the point, and finally, we reached it in this glorious moment of class bonding and relief - "Discipline!" we all sighed, as the facilitator circled the term on the board about fifteen times in red dry erase marker. We'd done it, kind of - we'd grasped Foucault, or at least the one hundred pages we'd read of him.

And Chandra's right - it does change how I see the world.

Not that Foucault's some end-all, be-all. It's more that I've finally mastered an intellectual language I hadn't known before. It was rather alarmingly dorky how quickly my hand shot up the following day in my anthropology senior seminar when our professor asked us about subjectivity. "Well-as-Foucault-would-describe-it," I started breathlessly, and tried to stop beaming like a small child.

And then, last night at the Angela Davis lecture (!!), Angela Davis herself started bandying about terms like "economy of punishment" and "technologies of power" and I just wanted to hit my hands against the balcony railing and shout, Yes, I understand now, I really understand you.

I didn't, of course. I've been disciplined not to. 

I apologize, once again, for having not written in quite some time. I have a good reason though.

For the past, well since January 14th, I have been co-chairing Colby's Haitian Relief effort with another freshman, named Lisa Kaplan. We are both members of the Student Advisory Board of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement. After Hurricane Katrina hit, the Goldfarb Center was asked to lead fundraising efforts, and they gladly accepted. Similarly, after the Haitian Earthquake, the college asked the Goldfarb Center to take the initiative on the college's relief efforts. Thus, an email was sent out to the Student Advisory Board asking for students to lead the effort. Lisa and I quickly responded, and the next day, we met to discuss our ideas. 

From there, it's been an amazing journey. Today, Friday the 26th, was the capstone of our fundraising efforts, the Colby for Haiti Benefit Dinner. This link, http://www.colby.edu/academics_cs/goldfarb/haiti_relief.cfm, shows our progress.

This has really been a community effort. Almost every club on campus, including SPB, SGA, SOBHU, GQ, Community Advisors, and Powder and Wig has participated. We had over 100 student volunteers, including the baseball team and volleyball team as waitstaff and bust staff at the Benefit Dinner. We involved the local Waterville Community and local businesses, and they have been incredibly supportive. Colby faculty, staff, and administration have all been incredibly supportive of our efforts as well.

All said and done, through our numerous fundraising efforts, such as a silent auction with 67 goods with a total retail price of over $12,000, corporate sponsorships and ticket proceeds, t-shirt sales to students who donated $10 or more, a bake sale put on by Community Advisors, and numerous alumni, trustee, and parent support, we raised $70,338. 

I would like to repeat that in bold. $70,338. It is really amazing what a little college in the middle of Maine can do to help those in the greatest need thousands of miles away. 

If you'd like to see more about our efforts please visit the Goldfarb Homepage, at http://www.colby.edu/academics_cs/goldfarb/.

It is only in such a nurturing and supportive community that I have found at Colby that two first-years could lead such a large effort.

Peace and Love,

Danny Garin 

This means that the bulk of my time spent in the science buildings occured sophomore year when I was a tour guide. Weekly, I'd walk past Olin Library or the greenhouses and try really, really hard to sound convincing. Before tours I'd even brush up on our crazily intense technological devices (like the isothermal titration calorimeter, which sounds like it could kill me in my sleep), but there are some things even long bouts of memorization can't make stick. You try talking about a 500 MHz Fourier Transform/Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectrometer while walking backwards.

Anyway, guilty confession: excluding tours, before today I had probably spent a total of fifteen minutes in Olin Library, and then it was mainly to admire the cool circular window seating area and the pretty wood finishing. It wasn't until this morning, when I was running in to grab a book on psychology for Professor Paliyenko in the French department, that I realized something:

Guys, Olin library has a basement. With extra books in it, for reading. 

I know all the science majors are rolling their eyes right now, but this literally blew my mind this morning. How have I gone four years without knowing this? I thought I'd mastered the basic architectural details of this college! Walking down that stairwell, it felt like I was in the Clue board game and I'd discovered a secret passageway to the conservatory. That analogy is particularly relevant because the basement is kind of creepy-looking and could easily pass as a setting for murder. 

Still. It's kind of nice to know that Colby's still surprising me four years in. (It's also a good reminder that I need to get my caboose out of Diamond now and again.) Any other secret hideaways I've been missing out on?

You're a professor of international studies and anthropology. Can Colby, in Waterville, Maine, call itself an international school?

Given [the] geographic factors, a lot of international stuff has to be on campus. I've been pleasantly surprised that there are a lot more international students than I would expect at a school like this. I don't think there are any classes I teach that don't have an international student. Especially teaching on the kind of issues that I teach on, to have other cultural experiences that you can draw on in the classroom is huge, and I find it really useful.

You have been deeply involved in political activism in other places. What part of that work did you bring to Colby?

I've been teaching a lot about the issues like migrant rights and labor issues now, which I haven't done in the past, so I find that I'm bringing that experience with activism and using it in my classroom. And I'm trying to do it with some of the guests I'm bringing to campus like the Yes Men and filmmaker Alex Rivera, who's coming in the spring. I've just come back from three weeks in Slovenia. I was meeting with activists there and doing research. And I've been working over the past two or three years finishing up my new film, Bastards of Utopia, that's about activism.

And Bastards of Utopia isn't your first documentary. How did you choose film as your medium?

A couple of reasons. Initially I think I was just seduced by the technology. … I was assigned a five-minute video that ended up turning in to something much larger-on a student group that was planning to occupy the president's office. It [became] a feature length documentary with Ben Affleck narrating and this huge production that took me away from my studies as a graduate student at Harvard for six months touring with the film.

Wow. That's pretty big.

Part of it was a matter of circumstances with that. But then I began to really reflect on some of the things I was able to do and able to represent in film that I really couldn't in text. One of the things I like is just how accessible film is. So many more people can watch what you've put into film, and so many more people just feel that they can critique what you've done in film. It isn't sort of isolated from public discussion the way that scholarly texts are.

Do students use film in the classes that you teach?

I teach Media, Culture, and the Political Imagination, a senior seminar. It's not primarily a production class, but I have students do a couple of exercises. I find that [when] students have to film a process or do a portrait of an individual, they subsequently have an eye for watching … that they didn't have before. I think it's crucial to actually work with the media a little bit in order to get students really thinking in a different way.

What is your favorite subject to teach?

I now have a pretty consistent group of classes, and I really enjoy them because they're very diverse. I teach on human rights, social movements, nationalism, and documentary film, and well as intro to anthropology. That seems very disparate but really sews together the interests that come together in my primary research and in the kind of fieldwork that I've been doing.
You teach a Jan Plan class working with the Oak fellowship program, which brings a front-line human rights activist to Colby for a semester.

This class right now is called Human Rights and Social Struggles in Global Perspective and it's IN211. I've taught it as a Jan Plan the last few years because the timing allows us to look at the new candidates for the Oak fellowship, which is really great. First there's an introduction to human rights, and the second half is a chance for students to really get their hands dirty doing research and understanding the issues in each country. It's really fun. We look at the top cut of the candidates, and then students look at the organizations they work for and do research and build a research file.

The Oak fellowship is one of the neatest things that happens at Colby. It's really remarkable to bring a front-line human rights activist to campus and have those really direct interactions with students. That's pretty incredible.

Is the Oak fellowship program unique to Colby?

I haven't seen it anywhere else. And the emphasis is on a front-line human rights activist rather than someone who is an administrator or who is now primarily working on the international level. It has to be people who are really directly engaged in these issues and at some personal risk to themselves.

You have studied and worked all over the place. How did you choose Eastern Europe and then Waterville, Maine?

I grew up in Maine and [as a child] had sort of planned, and been saving money from my paper route for a long time, to be an exchange student somewhere. I wasn't really sure where I would go, and the year I was a junior in high school an exchange student from Yugoslavia was staying in Bath [Maine]. … He talked me into coming to Yugoslavia as an exchange student. I didn't really know what I was getting into-I learned my first phrases on the plane from Frankfurt to Belgrade. Then the country fell apart that year while I was there. So a lot of my work since then has been trying to make sense of what happened in that year and what the right kind of response should be to that kind of crisis-from both scholars as well as people living there. I've just gone back there over and over. It became my obsession.

Bizarre. I was born in Buenos Aires, and I lived in Geneva, and I lived in Manhattan before coming here, and I love it [here].  But that's the bizarre thing. … I would have never thought I would end up in the countryside, in an old house. It's completely different than an urban kind of life but I love it.

How do you satisfy your love of art while living in a place that lacks a prominent art culture?

There's art in my house. I'm afflicted with a very bad case of what we call in French collectionnite, collection-itis, inflammation of the collecting drive, so there's art at home. … I'm looking at art all the time with my students, I go to Europe at least once a year, there's the museum. … I don't feel that I'm in some kind of cultural void.

You seem to have a really diverse background.

I've been a little all over the place. If I'm in America I feel European but if I'm in Europe they think I'm American, which God knows I'm not. … When I was growing up in Argentina as a kid I couldn't roll my R's, I spoke French at home, so people thought I had this thick French accent. I had to study Russian in high school to learn how to roll R's.

When did you realize you were interested in art?

I was always quite creative. I used to do pottery when I was five or six. I loved to create costumes from stuff around the house. I loved to have disguises. Then I really got into ballet. … In Switzerland the end of the obligatory school is when you turn 16, or around that time, so I stopped and went to do ballet full time and within three or four months I started having big problems with my feet. So I went back to school. … to a special section in high school in Geneva that had lots of painting and art history and sculpture. So that's when I started becoming really, really into art history. And then when I started university in Geneva I did both literature and art. I was quite interested in literature, [but] I love art history.

Do the two come together?

Literature and art?  Oh yeah.  If you start thinking about it there's a lot, from comic books to art criticism-because it's people writing on art and on visual stuff, paintings that have some words in them, text that refers to pictures, and you have a whole ancient tradition of describing works of art that didn't even exist or that might have been lost. Somehow I managed to reconcile those two things. As a matter of fact, I'm the president of the International Association of Word and Image Studies. 

What does that mean?

It's an international association of scholars who are in all kinds of different fields. You have art historians, literary types. You have linguists, anthropologists. You have some creative types, and any person who is interested in works that combine verbal and visual expressions.

Why did you choose images over words?

I knew that the main thing I was interested in was art history because I love pictures. I also think it's because I'm lazy, because I love looking at pictures rather than reading books. And I spent my entire childhood reading TinTin. I know it by heart. And that too, is words and pictures. But especially pictures, beautiful pictures.

What have you been researching lately?

I am finishing a book-it's [on] a very bizarre subject–but I'm working on graffiti that were made on frescos. I'm working on a particular chapel in Northern Italy which has 15th century frescos. Some of the frescos had inscriptions scratched on them. There are around 150 inscriptions, they start in the 16th century and go all the way to the 19th century. First they're in Latin, then they switch to Italian. But they're all events that happened in the history of the village. Each time something important would happen someone would go into that chapel and write that down on the paintings. And when you see it you first think vandalism, but it's something else. I'm really thinking about it as a devotional act, because they're on [paintings of] saints. I think about what it means to write history, to record history.

Do you have a favorite piece of art? A single one?

That's tough. That would be, for what [purpose]? Sometimes I'm thinking I would love to have several houses [for different kinds of art], so I could have a very modern one, because I do like very contemporary art. But I have an early 19th century house here, so [the art] has to go with the house. So, no. Don't ask that to an art historian.

Live from the Homesick Jamboree has just been published by Wesleyan University Press. What's the story behind it?

It traces homesickness from the American South. When I came to Colby, I came to teach and I knew that I was coming to a new place and that I wouldn't understand it. They say Southern writers write from the American South and can't really write about anything but the American South, so there's this weird displacement and question of place in the book. Part of the book is about where I am in the world, where I found myself to be in the world. And then motherhood is another big topic. There are a lot of poems about the experience of motherhood.

You have renowned writers in the Creative Writing Program. How do you think this has shaped the program?

I think a lot of the prestige of a creative writing program is traditionally thought to be the faculty, and so the faculty is part of that. But I think the most amazing thing about Colby is how good the students are.

What do you like most about your Colby students?

They are very smart. My students are self-selected, so most people don't take the class unless they want to. It's not like an intro math class where you have people that really don't like math but have to take it. Many of them actually do what I say. They work at it, and they try it, and they get really good fast. It does not cease to amaze me how good they can get.

Given how much you like writing, how did you decide to go into teaching?

I like to write. I wanted to go live on my grandmother's farm and have children and… then the truth of the economy of the world stepped down and I had to figure out how to make a living. And someone offered for me to teach one project class at this one college and I thought, I'll try. This was twenty years ago. And I found that I liked it. It's funny because my father is a college professor and it's the last thing I wanted to do. But I liked it, and I didn't want to be bored. So I ended up teaching and it was a surprise I loved it very much.

Did you always know you would write poetry?

I started out as a fiction writer. I have a really hard time writing stories… I feel like I'm lying. It took me longer than other people to realize I should be writing poetry. So the most amazing thing is I couldn't tell a story in prose but I could in poetry, and I don't know why.

Should writers write only when they feel inspiration or is inspiration a myth?

I think that both things are true. When we are young, we often need a trigger, something that inspires the writing, for instance, emotions. As you grow older, the triggers can be a bit more complicated than that. They come from different sources. Rather than just being an emotional trigger, they can be intellectual triggers, like you read a poem. They can be sensual triggers, like something you see in the world. I think the triggers could get more complicated. If you wait for inspiration you're probably doomed.

Run by Tufts University School of Medicine and Maine Medical Center, the program aims to combat the shortage of medical doctors in Maine. A competitive group of college students from the University of Maine system as well as Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin apply towards the end of their sophomore year.

Admission to the program is contingent upon having taken a prescribed curriculum of biology, physics, chemistry and math classes, and maintaining a grade point average (G.P.A) of 3.5 or better in all coursework. Out of the 60 or so applicants each year, about a dozen gain admission. The program offers discounted tuition because Maine does not have an in-state medical school. Though it does not require it, the program encourages students to practice medicine in Maine after the program.

“Basically, it's trying to put a rural twist to your education so that you know if practicing in a rural situation in Maine is what you want to do,” Baier said. “Often, doctors will come in to Maine and they will get out as quickly as they can because it's not what they are prepared to do and it's not what they want to do.”

For the first two years of the program, students spend most of their time taking classes at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. For the last two years, students have the opportunity to participate in clinical rotations in Portland and other cities in Maine.

A major factor in the appeal of the Early Assurance Program is the fact that candidates can major in a wide range of disciplines and pursue other interests besides the traditional premed curriculum.

Baier expressed joy and relief at his admission to the Early Assurance Program. “It ended up being a lot easier than I thought it would be, because it wasn't something I was driving towards all the time. Basically I was going about what I wanted to do here, my music major and doing premed on the side,” he explained. “It's a really nice feeling. I've always dreamed of being a doctor, and now I know that it's actually going to happen.”

In any case, there are a couple sections that I come back to again and again, and one of them is Jewish studies. (In case you’re interested: third floor west, go through the door and turn right. Oh, and try to think ofthe flickering lightbulb as a part of the atmosphere—it’s like you’re in the old city of Jerusalem reading by candlelight. If you listen to “Hava Nagila” on your iPod at the same time, it’s even more convincing.) I’ve always been fascinated by religions—what people believe and why, and the parallels between them—and actually thought hard about being a Religious/Jewish studies major before I saw the light that is Environmental Policy. Anyway, normally I look for the books with pretty covers and/or pictures, but this time I went for the old fabric-covered texts on the bottom row, the ones with more Hebrew than English in the titles. And without knowing why, I picked up the Talmud.

(In retrospect, I think one reason is that I really, really like the word “Talmudic.”)

As I understand it, the Talmud is a series of arguments, in which scholars make assertions and then tell each other why they're wrong. It's oral law that's been written down, and absolutely fascinating, not least for the glimpse it gives into an ancient culture. Also, parts of it are quite funny--I still haven't decided whether the humor is intentional or not.

A few quotes:

Why are the heads ofthe Babylonians round? You have asked a great question, my son, answered Hillel. Because the midwives of the Babylonians are not very experienced.

Said Rab to his son, Hiya: Drink not medicines. Leap not over streams. Do not have teeth extracted, and provoke not a serpent nor a Syrian woman.

Rabbi Simon ben Eleazer said: One may keep village dogs, cats, monkeys, and porcupines, because they help to keep the house clean.

Most of the passages debate the same issues that people struggle with today—namely, what it means to live a good life—and some of the wording is just beautiful—it reads like poetry. There are also bits of advice, like how to tell if a person is lying. The next time you suspect someone of pulling your leg, I suggest you try the following test:

Once a man came before Rabbi and said to him: “Your wife belongs to me and your children they are mine.” “Would you like to drink a glass of wine?” The man drank and burst. This proved that the man lied.

I’ll end with a useful tip for those of you who, like me, are trying to figure out what you want to do with your lives, and what to study at Colby in order to become successful:

Bar Kappra discoursed: Always teach your son an honest and clean trade. What is it? Rabbi Yehuda replied: “Needlepoint embroidery!”

Thank goodness: There’s a whole shelf in Miller devoted to just that.

After finishing her Colby studies in January, Emily Colin '10J had plans to coach alpine skiing at a high school in Vermont, study arctic watersheds in Alaska, and bicycle from Ecuador to Argentina teaching young people about the environment.

Colin's plans seem to take her all over the place, and this isn't the first time she has carved her own nontraditional path.

In January Colin graduated at the age of 24. She had arrived as a 21-year-old freshman, and she was one of only three students on Mayflower Hill over age 22 last fall. She shrugged when asked about being in college with students six years younger. “I like to do things different than everyone else, so I guess it's fitting.”

Age isn't the only thing that set Colin apart. Unlike most Colby students, she didn't start college straight out of high school. Colin had other plans before her love of learning drew her to Waterville, where she thrived academically and beyond.

Colin arrived at Colby ready to pursue a geology major and was immediately inspired by her structural geology class. “It's so freaking rad,” she said, eyes illuminating. During her four years Colin embraced experiences outside of the classroom as well, skiing for Colby's Division I alpine ski team (finishing as high as seventh in the NCAA Eastern Championships in her final season) and exploring Maine on her bicycle.

Colin's untraditional path began when, after high school in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, she trained for three years-moving around the country in hopes of making the U.S. Ski Team. During this time she recovered from frustrating knee injuries and at times worked four jobs to pay for rent, groceries, and ski equipment. As always, Colin was open to any opportunity-even after her knee kept her from fulfilling her alpine dreams. Her injuries led her to Pilates for recovery and then to her winter job as a Pilates instructor. Before college Colin learned to be economically self-sufficient and resourceful.

Moving into a Colby dorm room with students right out of high school was a little strange after living in an apartment and paying rent, Colin said-but not a worry. “I was excited to be in school again, and I didn't even think about it.”

The transition was hard at times, but Colin ended up living off campus with five 21-year-old classmates she considers best friends. At their Waterville apartment, which is decorated with stickers that say Geology Rocks!, they host potluck dinners for the organic gardening club.
But Colin's main passion at Colby was in the Mudd Science Building. Not ready to end her formal education with her Colby degree, she has applied to graduate school for environmental geochemistry. Her passion for learning about how the Earth works goes hand in hand with her love for keeping the Earth working this way. Colin said she hopes to “inspire others to love what they see and respect it.”

Before starting graduate school, Colin intends to teach others how to respect the Earth, continuing her unusual path towards education out of the classroom-and south of the border. This September Colin will travel the length of South America with a high school friend, educating young people about environmental issues in their own countries.

At her off-campus apartment, Colin relaxes in her hammock

What inspired a college graduate with big plans to take time away from school to bike 3,600 miles through a foreign continent? That same lust for learning that brought Colin to Colby-and a desire to make a difference. “First of all,” she said, “biking is a great way to see things a lot better than when you're driving in a car.” Colin said she learned how to “tread lightly, live greenly, and leave no trace” during high school, and that launched her into a path of environmental activism.

Colin plans to provide her own basic knowledge about climate change to as many people as possible through environmental education on her journey from Quito, Ecuador, through Peru and Bolivia to Cholila, Argentina.

Then what? Colin received a three-year research position at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, studying arctic watersheds near Lake Toolik. It's an offer that will combine her love of science and the outdoors and give her a straight shot into grad school. “I can't pass it up,” she said, putting her hands up and shrugging. She smiled widely: “It's rare you come across something in the Arctic Circle.”

An indirect path to graduate school, but, if past experience is any indication, it will work out just fine.

Kris - you all know Kris, right? If you don't you must hightail it to his blog - graduated last year, and had this to say in response to one of my 'BEING A SENIOR IS TERRIFYING' moments on Facebook:

"I'm not sure if this is actually how it happened or just how I'd like to remember it, but I think I tried to immerse myself even further into everything I did. I wanted to milk the final stretch for as much as possible...If you must leave Mayflower Hill, do it kicking and screaming, and start the kicking and screaming early."

Wise words, no? (Seriously, if you haven't, read his blog.) I started this process last semester, taking time to attend random lectures and events on campus, joining BMR (best decision ever), and doubling my caffeine intake. But I don't think I'm as Turbo!Annelise as I could be. There's an inner kicking and screaming ninja just waiting to be released.

So here is my solemn pledge, put down on this sacred insideColby space: I promise to savor my senior spring. There. Done. I also promise, for the sake of all those around me, not to exceed three cups of coffee per day (I get twitchy). 

It's going to be epic. 

In a sense, it was edifying having so much work to do for one class. It involved mainly reading, debating and writing about China from various perspectives. Most of the literature was very depressing, and I can only conclude the class was aptly named "Hell On Earth".

Did I learn anything? Much less anything useful?

Absolutely, if only how sad human oppression has been, and that the sort of brutality seen in parts of the world today is really nothing new. Of course I'd like to believe I knew all that already, but the class presented a unique perspective, the Chinese perspective. While I failed to appreciate the works of the almighty Lu Xun, I came to admire such tongue-in-cheek writers as Mo Yan.

On a different note, the movies were remotely entertaining. I got a decent portrayal of the Chinese countryside, but I would not care much for all the snow they have over there!

If you're looking for a class to take next JanPlan, I'd recommend this one. It will stun, shock you and, in short, present that other view of humanity we rarely get at Colby.

This Jan Plan I: 

Went skiing twice at Sugarloaf,

Went to Freeport and bought $10 Brooks Brothers Cords (TEN DOLLARS!), 

Ate at Pad Thai Too twice (the first time, I made the mistake of NOT ordering the larger, Colby sized portion),

Ate at the Bread Box once (I highly recommend the baked brie),

Led/Am co-leading Colby's Haitian Relief Effort (as a first-year...It's crazy!),

In that capacity, I have met with Bro (President), Dean Terhune (Dean of Students), Vice President Ammons (Vice President of College Affairs), and numerous other high-level administration officials, all of whom have completely supported our initiative,

Have been in the local news twice,

Have planned/been planning a, hopefully, $20,000 benefit dinner for Haiti,

Have met with Wateville Business owners,

Began to work at the front desk in Lunder House with the wonderful Martha and Mary,

Ate at my first semester professor of government and professor of economics' (they are married) house for dinner,

Became an expert at using Donkey Kong in Super Smash Bros on Nintendo 64,

Went snowshoeing for the first time,

Went ice skating on Johnson Pond,

And, did I mention that I also was taking a literature class three times a week? 

The fact that I love libraries so much might be the main reason I can't wholeheartedly entertain thoughts of moving to Paris permanently after graduation. Because - as I remarked in a blog post during my time abroad last year - Parisian libraries are scary, scary places. Their librarians are not warm and fuzzy creatures who host library game nights (see pictures 22-26). They are those forbidding mothers you occasionally see on the playground, guarding their children like they are the Holy Grails of Toddlers. (You know the type: the mothers who only feed their children weird bits of algae, so that the bliss that is a warm chocolate chip cookie will forever be ruined for the kids' poor, delicate stomachs.)

These metaphorical children, of course, are the massive collections of archived documents and literature in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. I understand the paranoia, I really do. Those resources are amazing, and they should be kept safe and intact.

Still. 

Take this translated and abridged transcript of a conversation I had yesterday with a librarian. For context, I was searching for articles in two 19th century periodicals, part of my job as Professor Paliyenko's research assistant. I'd already visited one library in vain. At the next, I'd been sent back and forth between two desks so I could try and gain access to the special collections and make a photocopy. It seemed I'd finally found someone who could help me.

Me: Hello, Madame! I hope you can help me.

Librarian: (looks skeptical)

Me: (nervous laugh) See, I'm the research assistant to the head of the French department at a school in the United States. I'm trying to find this article... (I hold out the information; she stares disdainfully at my messy handwriting)

Librarian: Where is your documentation?

Me: My - documentation - oh, here's my passport, and my International Student ID Card, and my Colby student ID card, and...

Librarian: You do not have documentation?

Me: I thought from the website that this was what I needed to access -

Librarian: You need a signed official letter from the head researcher and a request form to have access to these archives. The request form must be filled out at least 48 hours before your arrival.

Me: I'm really sorry, I don't have a letter like that. If you need to see what my professor is writing about, I can show you the introduction to her book in progress? I have a printed version of it in my bag...

Librarian: That is not an acceptable form of documentation.

Me: Ah. Okay. Well, the problem is, I'm leaving the country in just a couple days, and I don't have access to a fax machine for my professor to send over a signed letter -

Librarian: Then I cannot help you, can I? (She turns back to her computer decidedly.)

See what I mean? TERRIFYING. And I'm not even transcribing the part where I kept trying to argue with her very politely and she gave me multiple looks of death. If I keel over for no apparent reason in the near future, you know who to blame.

Hm. Maybe the French government is secretly training new covert agents for state defense. If so, I know where they work by day.

Two years ago, the Yes Men got themselves invited as keynote speakers to Go-EXPO, Canada's largest oil conference. Posing as representatives of Exxon-Mobil and the National Petroleum Council, Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum introduced a new biofuel, made from the human victims of climate change, and they called it Vivoleum. While showing a video about the first victim, a loyal Exxon-Mobil janitor (actually a comedian friend of theirs) they passed out biofuel candles to all those in attendance.

“There's a priceless look on the audience's face when they realize they're holding this dead person in a candle,” said Bonanno.

This stunt is one of many. The Yes Men have (mis)represented the Dow Chemical Company on BBC news, spoken for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development along with the mayor of New Orleans, and presented their vision of Halliburton's latest survival technology at an insurance conference. But these alternative personas aren't just for fun.

The dynamic duo poses as high-level corporate executives or government officials, staging hoaxes to expose what they say are the unethical, profit-maximizing practices of the very organizations they pretend to represent. On October 27, Bonanno spoke at Colby about their recent work and to promote their new movie, The Yes Men Change the World, which was screened later that evening at the Railroad Square Cinema in Waterville.

Their brand of social activism is unconventional to say the least-“mischief that exposes truth,” Bonnano calls it. “If you want to be taken seriously, you have to make people think you have a lot of money,” he said.

In the Yes Men's latest stunt, Bichlbaum posed as a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official in front of journalists at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and announced that the chamber would support an across-the-board carbon tax-a radical step beyond current cap-and-trade proposals that the chamber opposes-in order to satirize what he calls the chamber's traditionally eco-unfriendly practices.

“The debate on climate change has been created by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,” Bonanno told students. “The reason we [as a society] haven't done anything [to address climate change] is because there is lobbying and fake grassroots campaigns saying that climate change is not happening. It's like trading a bit of short-term profit for, essentially, the future.”

The chamber took the Yes Men's attack seriously. The night the pair was scheduled to speak at Colby and Railroad Square, they received word that the chamber was suing the comedy group on the grounds that the Yes Men used its trademark to make money.

Bichlbaum went to deal with the lawsuit and Bonanno introduced the film at Railroad Square to an overflowing crowd of community members, Colby students, and faculty.

“That film was remarkable,” said Bob Ingalls, a frequent Railroad Square visitor from Mt. Vernon, Maine, said afterwards. “Now that was good work.”

Far before I boarded the plane to Paris, my mother asked me something in the solemn kind of voice you usually expect from someone who wants to borrow money or needs help burying a body in the desert. “You’ll go to the Hermès sale with me, won’t you?” she requested, eyes wide. I laughed a little, amused by the dramatics, but nodded.

For those who don’t know Hermès, it’s a Parisian luxury goods and fashion house that sells things I never thought would have a three-digit price tag, like beach towels. Scarves are one of its specialties and are what interest my mother, an avid collector. For years, she’d dreamed about attending the mythical biannual Hermès sale in Paris. This January was her first opportunity.

And so, good little anthropology student that I am, here is an account of the first day of the January 2010 Hermès sale, alternately titled, “Gird Your Loins, They’re Bringing Out the Plissés.” (Plissé is a kind of scarf. Trust me, before last week, I knew nothing about them either.)

1/20/2010.

3:45am. My mother wakes me up, brimming over with nervous energy. Blearily, I drink two sips of the coffee offered to me and get dressed. As I put on a scarf that cost me 6 euro at a Parisian marketplace, I dimly register that I’m not quite Hermès’ target audience.

4:41am. We arrive at Porte Maillot, near the outskirts of Paris. It is still very dark. My mother pays our taxi driver, with whom she has just maintained a chipper conversation for our half hour drive. God knows I don’t have that kind of energy. Maybe I’m adopted.

4:43am. There are four other people here, lined up in the cold outside the building doors. The way my mom was talking, I was expecting hordes. Is matricide still illegal?

5:12am. There’s a veritable line now, and I forgive my mother for the early wakeup time. Because of it, we’re right up front. A security guard, regarding us like escapees from a mental facility, offers to open up the front doors half an hour early at 5:30, and points to the escalators upstairs where we’ll need to go. Then he returns to his guard dog, a Rottweiler who looks much less intimidating when playing catch.

5:14am. Oh dear, people around me are trying to make conversation in French. Maybe I should have drank more of that coffee.

5:31am. The front doors are opened. Mass pandemonium ensues. People in the back of the line start running to try and cut, and soon it’s a veritable stampede, a charging of the bulls up the escalator and to the next waiting area. My mother’s in the front-lines, her spot assured by an adolescence on the track team, so I hang back to help the security guard pick up some of the wreckage.

5:35am. Find my mother upstairs at the front of the line again. The first three women in line camped out here overnight. I feel much warmer toward my mother for not making me sleep in a tent.

5:49am. Boy, I really should have brought a book.

6:01am. Well. Lots of cracks in the ceiling. Let’s count the tiles now…

6:24am. Hermès fans know not to wear their scarves to the sale, as they’ll have to check them in with security, sucking up time to get to the best stock. Some seem slightly lost without them, like birds that have just lost their plumage. “I’ve been to every sale,” one pushy French woman says almost aggressively behind me. I grasp the message. I should be further ahead in line than you are.

7:05am. Security moves us in packs of ten to a better waiting area, with barricades set up to prevent people from cutting. This must be how sheep feel during those sheep dog herding demonstrations.

8:30am. Half an hour to go till opening! Everyone’s very awake right now and chattering excitedly. I keep spying on newcomers through a crack in the barricade. They have to go the end of the very, very long line, but they’re all holding coffee cups. Boy do I want their coffee.

8:45am. The guards let us check our coats and proceed to the next (and final) waiting area. My mother has already given me her coat and dashes forward with the rest as soon as she’s given the opportunity; I edge my way over to the coat check through the throngs.

8:46am. I remember a scene in The Poisonwood Bible where one of the daughters stuck her elbows out while caught in a human stampede. Her elbows out, she was lifted by the movement of those around her and avoided being trampled. Maybe I should try it.

8:47am. Silly me! I forgot pointy elbows are the weapon of choice around here; all I’d accomplish would be pain in my funny bone. A man behind me tries to argue his way to the front of the coat check – “I have a bag!” he says in English, and “Yeah, so do I!” I reply, holding up my own – and then pretends he doesn’t understand English after all, shoving in front of me in an entirely different kind of language.

9:04am. I enter the Hermès sale room. Hello, brave new world. I stand to the side with the Hermès salespeople, who are decked out in an orange that screams 'retail warrior.'

9:05am. My mother, who was among the first to enter, is also one of the first three to be helped at the shawls. There's a scuffle further back in the line as one woman grabs the shoulder of another woman to take her place; the shovee starts bawling. Does she have a shoulder injury?

9:15am. The woman is still sobbing. I’m starting to get the idea it’s due less to pain and more because she lost her place in line.

10:01am. As crowds simmer, social niceties make a comeback.

11:34am. Phase I: Grab and Go – is complete. Now it’s time for Phase II: Does This Alarming Shade of Orange Make Me Look Like I Have Jaundice? My mother carefully inspects the scarves for defects and makes her choices. It’s rather incomprehensible why Hermès uses so much orange and yellow in their scarves. Do they think people want to look like traffic cones?

11:59am. Still – looking at my mother’s orange-free final choices, there’s an undeniable, gorgeous artistry even I can see. I understand why she loves them so much. She’s practically glowing, thrilled with her finds. Others are starting to line up by the registers with their spoils, and the mood is utterly civilized again. Darwin would be proud.

12:45pm. We emerge into daylight, blinking. Some of the people around us have just started their day.

Just for fun, let’s return to October, when my group was tracking rhinos in the Ugab Desert. Our trackers are Abel, Jonas, and Sam.

25 October

            This morning we found a spoor early, just a kilometer or so out of camp. It was on the way to the spring where we fill our water jugs, and the spoor crossed directly over our tire tracks from last night. By watching the trackers I’m learning more of what to look for: skin wrinkles on the bottom of the footprints, dampness in the sand, whether the prints are over or under the squiggling lines of early-morning lacewings, whether leaves knocked from the bushes retain moisture at the edges. And then there are the signs I could never hope to see: the faintest of smudges leading the way across solid rock; the places where a rhino has touched its nose to the ground and breathed.

            All of these things told us that the spoor were made after sunrise, less than two hours ago. We followed this language of tracks for one hour, two, three, as the sun rose higher and the long shadows of the hills shrank away, turning, backtracking, backtracking again. Nobody spoke while we walked. And then, at the edge of a small valley, Jonas held up one finger, and we all dropped to the ground. There stood a bull under a single tree, his head lifted, ears swiveled in our direction. It was closer than we would have liked to be, actually, and so we and the rhino froze in a sort of dance, each intensely wary of the other.

            Abel wrote the rhino’s name on his palm: Mike, a young male of four or five, who had not been born in the Ugab. Nobody knew how he had gotten here.

            Mike, deciding we were unimportant, lay down so that only his horns showed above the grass, sticking up like periscopes. Abel wanted to get a good photo for the SRT database, and so he clipped a leash to Shamira [his dog] and tied the other end to his walking stick, hands moving silently.He left the cane and the dog with us as he crept to a closer boulder.

            As he walked a rock rolled, and Mike stood up, facing us. He wavered for a moment, and then he took a step forward.

            I looked at the trackers, trying to figure out what this meant, but they were both focused on Mike, muscles tense. The rhino bucked his head, once, and took another step in our direction. One more, and now he was walking towards us.

            “Go up the rocks,” said Jonas, so softly that I could barely hear her. “Now. Now.” I looked around; no one was moving; they were all staring transfixed at the rhino, now nearly trotting. At my feet Shamira tensed, hackles rising, her breath in loud spurts. I looked at the dog and the hill. If we left her here would she bark, make Mike angrier? All of this was happening very quickly.

            I picked up the cane and the leash and, crouching, made my way up to a cluster of rocks. From where I was now I could no longer see Mike, could only guess what was happening by watching the trackers. And the trackers were wide-eyed.

            Okay, I thought. If Mike suddenly comes into view, I’ll have two, maybe three seconds before he reaches me. What do I have to defend myself? A wooden stick and a Rhodesian ridgeback. I didn’t have much faith in the whacking-stick*, but I could try to jump away at the last moment and throw the dog to the other side as a distraction. Sorry, Shamira.

            Below, Sam looked up at me and gestured towards his eyes:watch me for instructions. I nodded. No one was moving. Beside me, Shamira was making a low rumbling with her whole body, a growl that vibrated under my fingers where I held her. I pulled her closer, felt her shaking in my hands.

            I could hear the rhino’s feet now, flat thumps on the sand. Alright, I thought. Here he comes.

            And then something changed in the trackers below me: a sudden breath, held in and released as one. Sam lifted his hand towards me: stand up. And now, standing, I could see what was happening. Mike had turned and was walking away, casually, as if to prove he wasn’t frightened of us. He passed across the valley and up the other side, tail high and twitching, and looked back once before sinking down over a ridge and out of sight.

            Shamira thumped her tail.

            Later that night I went up to Sam. “Was dit naby?” I asked quietly, in Afrikaans. Was that close?

            Sam squinted at me, then looked down his hands, clutching the end of his own pale walking stick. He was missing one of his thumbnails, had only a swollen scar in its place. “Ja,” he said finally. “Dit was baie naby.” Too close.

 ___________________________________________________________________________________________

*The trackers carry walking sticks with them everywhere. When I asked why, Abel told me they were for killing snakes and “whacking rhinos.” Why would you ever want to whack a rhino? “If the rhino is already on top of you,” said Abel, “then you can reach up with your stick and whack it in the face.”

            “Couldn’t you, I don’t know, throw rocks?”

            “Oh, no! If you throw rocks you will only make the rhino angry, and the last thing you want is an angry rhino.”

            I considered this, and then, feeling like I was being duped somehow, went up to Jonas. “Jonas,” I said, “Why does you carry a stick?”

            “For snakes and rhinos,” said Jonas, swinging an invisible bat through the air. “Whack-whack!”

 (Part three in a series of entries about studying abroad in Namibia. And did you groan at that punny title? I don't know who put it there. Really, I had nothing to do with it.)

15 November

It’s a strange thing that the first time you see an animal out here, it takes a while for your brain to figure out what it is, especially from a distance. It’s like you don’t know what to look for, because you don’t have that image yet in your mental bank. During my first few weeks I remember looking out over the empty plains while our teachers pointed out zebra, oryx, springbok, all manner of critters right in front of me, and not seeing anything at all. I kind of didn’t believe them. (But of course they were right.)

The lions were a bit like this. We’d been going for two hours, doing zebra census, and came around abend to find a few moving shapes. They were smooth, it’s the best word to describe them, and I was still squinting and puzzling when Ann, our driver, looked up and said, “Holy heck, lions.”

There were four of them, standing in the tall grass and facing away, and then they turned and sort of slid out of sight, down into a riverbed that ran parallel to the road. We sat in the land rover and blinked, and Sarah, who’d been sitting in the truck bed, climbed very quietly out of the open back and wedged herself into the back seat without ever touching her feet to the ground. We rolled up the windows and crept slowly forward to where the lions had been, then turned off the engine to wait.

We didn’t have to wait long. A minute or so, and then a shadow passed behind the yellow-white grass and stopped; it twitched and lifted, very slowly, until two rounded ears appeared, a face, the velvet slope of shoulders and back. The lioness slipped through the grasses, coming steadily towards us. Everything about her suggested she had complete control of the situation, and she knew it.

(All photos courtesy of my talented and delightful abroad-mate Rebecca Reusch. Thanks, Becksters!)

“Don’t make a sound,” mouthed Ann, wrapping her hand around the keys in the ignition.The lion kept coming, lifting her head to sniff the air, and Ann turned the keys.

The lion was startled—she froze for a moment—but then she relaxed again, and walked up to the side of the car. The tops of her shoulders were as high as the door handles. She’s curious, I realized, just like the rhino. She’s not sure what we are. 

Though she’d seemed tan from a distance, up close the lion was a spectrum of earth tones. The backs of her ears and the tip of her tail—which twitched as she surveyed us—were pure black. There were tufts of white in the fronts of her ears, and a creamy stripe along the lower lid of each eye; her mouth, which hung open slightly as she panted in the heat, was hard-toothed and dark-gummed.A pink tongue rested in the cup of her bottom jaw.

Several red mopane leaves clung to her fur, as if she had just risen from a nap, and her sides were spotted with fat black ticks. 

She stood beside us, still panting, then turned and flopped down under the closest tree, eyes half-closed. One by one, three other lions followed her exactly: they crested the hill, examined us, and lay down. One was female and two were juvenile males, with half-grown mohawk manes stretching from the tops of their heads to between their shoulder-blades. When they were all under the tree, Ann turned off the engine again.

The lions weren’t asleep. They watched the riverbed, where a herd of zebras was passing through, with three young foals. The first lioness, clearly the boss, rose to her feet and crept over the ridge to the right. The other lioness followed, curving around to the left, every muscle tight. Both males stayed under the tree, on their backs in the shade.

“They’re letting the girls do the work,” someone whispered. “Typical men.”

It was impossible to see what the lionesses were doing; they’d vanished completely into the vegetation. For several minutes we waited, the stallions still facing off, the zebra foals twining between their mothers’ legs.

There was no visible instant that the herd figured it out—they were unaware, and then, just as surely, they knew, were galloping for all they were worth, hooves clattering loudly, dust rising all around.

The lionesses didn’t follow. They came back over the ridge and rejoined the males,who looked up upon their arrival as if to say, Oh hey, honey, I didn’t realize you’d been gone. But this time, instead of lying down again, the first lioness barked softly to the others, who rose as well. As one, they turned and faced us, standing in a perfect row.Their muscles tensed; even their tails froze in mid-twitch. They stared at us through the windows.

I don’t think a single one of us was breathing as the lions came forward, all four of them together. Two went around the back of the land rover and two around the front, bodies low. They seemed to be communicating with each other through eye contact, pacing out the distance, giving directions. We turned on the engine; the cats bristled slightly, but didn’t stop circling. I was twisting my head around, back and forth, and still I couldn’t keep track of them all. Now they’re pressed against the back of the truck; now they’re slipping past the sides; now one is standing directly between the headlights, looking up at the windshield. If we’d tried to leave, whichever way we turned we would have hit a lion.

Then, abruptly, the first lioness—the one calling all the shots—yawned and relaxed, lying down before us in the middle of the road. The others followed, falling asleep soon after.

We left them like that, spread-out and dozing, nearly two hours after that first brief sighting. We drove in silence for about half an hour, until we were definitely a safe distance away, and then we unstuck ourselves from each other in the cramped, sweaty backseat and got out of the car and flipped out.

P.S. Compare and contrast with Colby's own resident lion, the Lion of Lucerne in the Miller Street, who doesn't eat zebra and only eats students on special occasions.

P.P.S. I’m a huge fan of my new dorm, Averill, which is close enough to the library for me to dash over in the snow, snap an awkward photo in the middle of some poor freshmen’s study group, and dart back home in under three minutes. Awesome. Oh, the things I do for you, insideColby.

(I spent last fall in Namibia's Kunene region; here is an excerpt from my travel journal. This entry is from after we’d returned from rhino tracking, when my group was camping with seven Himba women in the Namib desert—we were performing plant transects to determine the density of certain plants that the Himba gather, to see if exporting them would be sustainable. The cosmetics company Estee Lauder is interested in using the plants’ resin for perfume purposes, and opening up the market would bring a great deal of money into the Himba community.)

We all woke up drenched in fog. In the morning all the Himba* women sat around the fire and did each others’ hair, smoothing the ochre around each thick cord, while the babies batted at the ends and toddled about the sand. They’re a very cohesive group, giggling and chatting and touching each other constantly, and seem to have little interest in us.

(This photo shows the weighing of the plant resin; the light doesn't do justice to the Himba's beautiful red color.)

            We measured and counted all of the Bushmen’s Candle on the mountainside, 230 in all. It’s a stocky, thorny shrub that gets its name from the wax shell that remains once the sticks have decomposed. The bushmen light these remains as torches, and the few times I’ve tried it at base camp, they’ve worked well. Although the Himba women were counting with us, Komungadjera had to sit down about halfway through. She perched on a boulder and rested her hands on her pregnant belly, looking towards the hills.

            Back at Marble Campsite, Lenna [a Herero woman who works at the campsite, who was to become a good friend] was excited. She’d just been approved to go to a training for wilderness guides, a two-week course in Sesfontein. She would  learn about local plants and animals, and the certification would allow her to apply for a promotion—to fulfill her dream of becoming “permanent.” And on the way there, she’d be able to stop in Opuwo and visit her mother.

            Lenna had promised to take me to the marble mine that gave the campsite its name, and so I helped her with her chores so she could finish work early, and we set off in the late afternoon. She led me up a trail, over a hill and around the skirt of a low mountain, past the edge of the campground. We walked through the Himba’s clearing on the way. There was a small hut and a fire pit, and the biggest poitjie (cauldron) I’d ever seen, over three feet tall. The Himba were gathered around the poitjie, eating pap with their fingers. I nodded to them as we passed, not really expecting aresponse—they normally have so little interest in the students that it verges on ignoring us—but this time, when I was with Lenna, everything was different.They hooted as we came up, calling, and talked earnestly to me in Otjihimba as if there was no reason I wouldn’t understand, offering meat and juice. I could only shrug my apology and turn to Lenna, who linked her arm through mine and pulled me closer to her.

            One of the older women stood up and said something vehement to us, waving her arms through the air. There was a moment of silence when she finished and then everyone howled. Lenna translated through her own giggles. “This woman thinks that I will lose you in the quarry, because your white skin will not show against the rock!”

            We didn’t linger in the clearing. We made our way up around a slope and there it was, brilliant white against the yellow-brown of the mountainside. It was as if an enormous mouth had taken a bite from the base of the mountain, leaving gnawed-off blocks of white rocks, sharp edges, tiered ledges leading down and around the cavern. The marble faces were cool even in the hot sun, cut perfectly flat and surprisingly rough, like fine sandpaper. Little chips of it were scattered about and glistened in the light. This quarry was started by the Chinese, but once the marble was mined they discovered that the roads to Orupembe aren’t good enough to transport the blocks on, so they deserted the project.

            Lenna and I sat down in the shade of the rock and talked. She told me her Otjiherero name, Makakomba, which has something to do with ‘sleep’ and something to do with ‘grandmother,’ although I didn’t quite understand what the relationship was. We talked about all sorts of things. We’d been there maybe 20 minutes when there came voices, and two red heads appeared around a corner. The heads looked at me, then looked at each other. They belonged to two Himba girls, in their early teens. Lenna called to them and they came forward hesitantly.

            Oneof the girls walked ahead, leading the way; of the two, she seemed to be the boss. She came directly up to me, squatted close, and proceeded to scrutinize me from every angle, circling as if I were a prize animal. I’ve never in my life been looked at so intently. Her eyes were dark , and she squinted slightly, as though struggling to make me out. Sometimes, if something interested her—like my nose—she’d jut out her chin slightly and reach forward, prod it with one finger. I tried to sit very still. Lenna watched, as if this were a perfectly normal way to greet someone.

            After several minutes the girl sat down three or four feet away and let out a stream of angry-sounding words; she even clapped her fist into her hand, loudly, to emphasize a point. The other girl had crouched nearby and was looking away.“What does she say?” I asked Lenna.

            “Shelikes your nose and your teeth,” said Lenna.

            “Thatwas what she said just now?”

            “Uh,”Lenna nodded.

            I introduced myself, with Lenna’s help. The bold girl was named Werihonena, andthe other, Kooendemba. Kooendemba had still not met my eyes; she whispered her name into the folds of her skirt.

            “You are with the plant workers?” asked Werihonena (as translated by Lenna). “You collect the resin?”

             “Yes, but I don’t collect the resin myself. I’m counting the plants.”

             “They pay you for counting the plants?”

            “I'm unpaid. But the pay for collecting is $N80 a kilo.”

            Werihonena nodded, thinking, and then let loose a sudden series of questions, so fast Lenna could hardly keep up. “Is that your watch?” (Yes.) “Can I see?” (Yes.)“What time is it?” (4:35) “How do you know?” (The little lines point to the numbers.) “Can I have it?” (No, I need it.) “Can I see your shoes?” (Yes.)

            I took off my black flip-flops and handed one to her, and she gave me one of her sandals, which was made from car tires. You could still see the tire’s tread on the bottom of the sole.

            Lenna said, “She wants you to try her shoes and walk in them.”

            “I have big feet.”

            “Try.”

            The shoes fit; Werihonena had big feet as well. They were made from a rectangle with crisscrossing straps in front and a single heel-strap. I had seen the other Himba—those that were not barefoot—wearing similar shoes, and was impressed by how comfortable and secure they were. “You made these?”

            “Yes. Walk!”

            I got up and walked across the smooth marble, then skipped and did a few twirls, stumbling on the way back with exaggerated dizziness. Even Kooendemba broke a smile, which had been my intention. When I sat down again Werihonena was holding my shoes close to her face, pulling out the thorns and stones that were embedded in the bottom. She had a made a pile of thorns on the marble,which she pointed at accusingly. “All of this was stuck in your shoe. You walk too much.” She pinched the heel of the flip-flop. “Where did you get this?”

            “I bought the shoe in America.”

            “No,no, this thing. This.” She tapped the rubbersole. “Where did you get this? It’s good.”

            “I didn’t make them,” I said. “They’re not like your tire shoes. I bought them all in one piece, already made.”

            “But what is this? Tire?”

            “No,it’s not… anything. It’s flip-flop sole. It didn’t used to be anything else.”

            “Oh." She was silent for a moment. "How many children do you have?"

            “None. I am not married.”

            “No children! You live with your mother?”           

            “Not anymore.”

            “You don’t!” Werihonena seemed genuinely outraged. “Why not?”

            “I left a few years ago to go to school, and when I’m not at school, I’m working.”

            “How often you see your mother?”

            “Maybe every couple months.”

            Here we had to stop for a moment. Werihonena had still not smiled through this entire exchange, though I suspected that it was in her nature to look severe; some of the others in the village wore the same fierce expression, and I thought they might be related. But now she only sat back, blinking, shocked. “You’ll see your mother again?” she asked finally.

            “Yes. And my father.”

            “Whenyou see you mother again…” She looked down, suddenly shy, and plucked at the pile of thorns. “…will you think of me?”

            “Sure,”I said.

            There was a pause. “You will remember?”

            “I’llwrite it down.”

            Werihonena nodded, pressing her lips together. After a moment she seemed to revive herself, and pointed to my sunglasses. “Why are you wearing those things?”

            “The sun hurts my eyes.”

            She took the sunglasses off my head and put them on, jumping to her feet. She began strutting back and forth across the marble, touching her face with her fingers every few steps. I could hardly stop laughing. The sunglasses were the sporty,reflective type, and how funny they looked when worn with a goatskin skirt! It was one of the most wonderful things I’ve seen here, Werihonena strutting in my sunglasses.

            Werihonena said, “Maybe you have see me before.”

            “Seen you? No, not that I remember.”

            “Maybe in the village you saw me, but it’s not me. I have a sister just the same. If you saw her, you might think it was me.”

            That was very interesting. In Himba culture, twins are considered extremely unlucky, even cursed, and for protection the twins, their mother, and any of their future children wear ostrich-shell necklaces to ward off evil spirits. Now I saw the necklace, too, beneath a larger necklace, tucked in against her skin. I was going to ask more, but right then two donkeys came around the edge of the slope, and both girls sprang up and began running away. Werihonena ran around the backside of the animal, shouting instructions to Kooendemba. Then she hollered for Lenna and I to join in, and together we chased the animal from all sides until we had cornered the donkey between us, its hooves clicking loudly against the stone.

            “We can ride it,” said Werihonena, “but first we need something for its mouth.”

            “A bridle? Do you have bridles in the village?”

            Werihonena frowned at me, then commanded something to Kooendemba. The shy girl ran off and reappeared with a fresh mopane branch torn from a tree. Werihonena held one end out for me to grasp, then dug her fingernails into the wood, peeling off strips of bark, discarding twigs and bright green leaves until she had worked her way down to the pale green under-bark.

            She pulled off a ribbon of under-bark, about three feet long. This she wrapped through the donkey’s mouth, tying it tightly under the soft knob of a chin.Then she peeled two more strips and tied them to the sides of the chin-strap, knotting the ends together. Reins. The donkey tossed its head unhappily.

            We led it to a low block of marble and Werihonena climbed on, using the stone as a stool before throwing one red leg over. She was still glaring around, but it was a happy glare, and she rode a few loops around the quarry, kicking her heels to spur the donkey into a half-trot. When she came back she jutted her chin towards me as she slid off: your turn.The donkey’s thick gray fur was matted red across its back from the ochre. 

            Kooendemba and Lenna held my arms as I climbed on—they seemed to have no faith in my ability to balance. The thin back was soft under my legs, and I pressed my palms to the donkey’s neck while Werihonena tugged the reins forward. I rode once around the quarry and then slid off, and Werihonena leapt back on, grabbing the mopane reins tightly in one fist. She pointed to the setting sun: time to get home. But before leaving she had one more question. “Can you take a photo of me?” She could not pay me for it, she said, but would like a photo anyway. She had never had her picture taken.

            “I don’t have my camera with me,” I said. “It’s back at camp. If you’d like to walk over with me I can take the picture there.”

            “We have to go home.”

            “Well,I’m leaving tomorrow, but if you come in the morning I’ll take your picture,and I can mail it to Lenna once I get back in the states.” Earlier today Lenna had given me an address to contact her at, the Marble Campsite’s PO Box in Opuwo.

            “We would like that.” Kooendemba nodded as well. “I’m sorry we can’t pay you.” She climbed onto the donkey behind Werihonena, and the donkey turned in the direction of the village.

            “Don’tbe ridiculous, I wouldn’t take money for it. Just come by.” Even as I said it,though, I knew I wouldn't see the girls again.

In the evening an old Herero woman walked into our camp with an empty jerry can, and I helped her to fill up water from the pump. As I did, she began chuckling, then laughing heartily,tilting her head back to show a near-toothless mouth. It was only after she’d left that I realized what she was laughing about. All up my arms and shoulders, where the girls had touched me, there were perfect red handprints on my skin.

* The Himba are one of the most traditional tribes in Namibia, easily identifiable by the characteristic red coating on their skin. They get their color by mixing powdered ochre with animal fat and the resin of the commiphora plant. They melt the mixture in a cow's horn by dropping in coals, then paint it across their skin, hair,and belongings. The paint is opaque, warm, and earthy-smelling. At first glance, it is impossible to tell skin from hair from fabric; everything blends together like a sepia photograph. The women wear skirts of stretched calfskin,with small flap in front and several more layers of ruffled leather in back.Sometimes they wear blankets wrapped around themselves, and when they do theblanket bulges so far out the back, because of all the ruffles, that from theside they are shaped like an ostrich. Their hair is woven into thick cords,coated so thickly with the ochre mixture that the cords seem wrapped in leather, and the shell of ochre is so thick on their scalps that it cracks apart like an eggshell. Some of the women wear headdresses, but not all—they’re usually worn after puberty, but are so elaborate that not everyone chooses to wear them every day. Around their necks,wrists, and ankles are layer after layer of beads and jewelry, stacked upon each other. The largest metal anklets come near halfway up the calf, and must weigh several kilos each. 

 I just came back from a semester abroad in Namibia, with Round River Conservation Studies, where I and six other students traveled through the bush, working with a number of researchers on their projects. I didn't blog while I was gone--no internet!--but I did keep a detailed journal of the experience. Here, then, are a few entries from while my group was tracking rhino in the Ugab desert; consider it retrospective blogging.

21 October

Fell asleep last night tothe flies buzzing and the chik-chik-chikof barking geckos in the Mopane trees; woke up to the thunder of severalhundred goats flowing around my tent in a frantic race to somewhere or other, thesand frothing under their hooves.

            The air is humid and dusty, and any water that tricklesfrom the pump is thick, gritty, and warm; it leaves your mouth coated likeyou’ve just eaten. Tiny flies and bees land on us to suck out the moisture,crowding around the insides of our elbows and the backs of our knees. My skinis so sticky that if someone threw me against a wall I would probably just hangthere, glued by my own sweat. Everything is uncomfortable but pleasantly so; itpresses in close to tell you where you are—here—andwhere you’re not, which is anywhere else in the world.

            We left Twyfelfontein around noon, to drive out and meetthe guides we’ll be tracking rhinos with. I rode on top of the car with Liz and Jess, and the weather was perfect for open-air driving: hot, overcast, andstill. After an hour or so a few raindrops fell, one by one and then faster,pinpricks of cold on our hot skin, and the clouds swept around the sky insilver-gray layers.

            We came to a round spring in a rocky plain ringed withhills, the sand criscrossed with fresh ostrich and rhino tracks, where we’dagreed to meet up with the others: Abel, who works for the NGO Save the RhinoTrust, and two local trackers. We had arrived early (and how do you set meetingtimes anyway, in the middle of the bush?) so we explored, shuffling over therocks to find the crinkled layers of sandstone and chunks of  amethyst. It was raining lightly, and the rocks shone. Sara and I found asingle tenebrionid beetle meandering across the sand, and crouched down towatch him up close. There’s a sub-species of tenebrionid over by the coastthat’s famous—it tilts its butt into the air and funnels fog mist down its backand into its mouth—but the inland beetles don’t do that, according to the fieldguides. Still, they’re neat.

            This beetle was having trouble as it jolted its wayacross the humps and divots in the sand. It would come to the top of a crest,totter, and careen down the other side, landing on its back with its legs and antennaeswiveling furiously. After a minute or so it would right itself, in painfulslow motion, then start up the next mountain. 

            The beetle came to the top of a ridge and froze. Saraand I leaned closer. Slowly, very slowly, it stretched its back legs straight,raising its bottom until it was nearly balanced on its head. “What’s it doing?”I asked.

            “It’s somersaulting!” said Sara. “It’s mooning us!”

            A fat raindrop landed on the domed back of the beetle,painting it dark and shiny. It pearled into a perfect ball, and then, as wewatched, it rolled down the length of the beetle’s back and onto its head.Something moved in the little face; the antennae twitched happily. Like itscousin by the ocean, the tenebrionid was capturing water from the air,funneling it into its mouth. But all the insect books claimed this beetle couldn’t do that.

            Sara and I were still glowing with the joy ofentomological discovery when we heard the first mutterings of a vehicle. Abelpulled up shortly after, a round-faced, skinny-legged German with buzz cut hairand a white beard. There were two men and a dog sitting on top of the car. Thetrackers were both sun-creased and as dark as Abel is pale, bundled in largecanvas parkas with the SRT logo on the front pockets. (It was probably 85degrees out, but many of the people I’ve met here consider any precipitation“cold.”) Their names are Jonas and Sam, and the Rhodesian ridgeback is calledShamira.

            And so, now numbering thirteen instead of nine, we leftthe watering hole and drove onwards. The road—if it could be considered a roadat all—was clearly not much traveled. Abel led the way and there were timeswhen I had no idea what path he was following. We bucked over rocks and spunfuriously in deep sand; heaved right and left so violently that I was throwninto Liz’s lap, then Jess’s; and at times tipped so precariously that thevehicle froze for an instant, as if deciding whether or not to topple. Then thethree of us on top, scarcely breathing, would fling ourselves one way oranother in a desperate attempt to sway the outcome. It took a full hour beforeI realized what this reminded me of. What else had I seen today, maneuveringits way over terrain too huge for its own good?

            Hills rose about us, first grassy and later sharp withrocks, and we rode the deep creases between them, curving around and around insuch a dizzying way that I lost all sense of which direction we’d come from. Asthe day cooled we saw the Brandberg mountains silhouetted to the south, assmooth and flat as if they had been torn from paper. And then suddenly Abelbraked, and before the wheels had fallen still the two men on top jumpedsilently to the ground and began pacing up the nearest hill. Abel got out witha strange contraption in his hand, like a number of black metal tubes shovedtogether, and climbed onto his hood to hold it high in the air. The contraptionmade a screeching, staticky sound. For several minutes he stood there, poised,and then the trackers returned smiling.

            They’d been concerned, they said, by a young rhino namedMike whose radio signal had not moved for several days, but they’d just seenMike in the next valley over and he was fine. He’d run off so quickly, though,that there was no reason for the rest of us to take a look. (I wish we couldhave seen him. I can’t wait to see a rhino!)

            At 7, after five hours of seasickness-inducing driving,we came to our camping-place in the Ugab riverbed. The sand was flattened withelephant tracks—“Big Guys,” Abel called them, as in “Did you hear about thetourists in Caprivi who got stomped by the Big Guys?”—and so we set up homeunder a canopy of tall acacias, heavy with pink-orange seed pods. When it’squiet, you can hear the pods snap off and fall through the layers of branches.

            It’ll be a nice sound to fall asleep to. Tomorrow westart tracking.

22 October

Rose early this morning toget started before it got hot. Josh [one of the leaders] and I rode on top of Abel’scar with the trackers. We were literally sitting on the cab, cross-legged on a warm metal grate with two low bars tohold for support. I’ve gotten used to the no-seatbelts thing, but this tookcar-riding to a new level. (Ha, ha.)

            I’m getting a better feel for who the trackers are. Jonasis short and intensely focused when he’s working, but quick to laugh. Hedoesn’t speak to us but will answer when asked something directly. Sam is talland thin with a bit of white in his hair and delicate spectacles. He’staciturn, and always scanning the horizons; he looks like he’s readingeverything he sees. Both men wear fitted green cargo pants, khaki shirts, andcaps with the Save the Rhino Trust logo. Fly wears his hat forwards, and Jonas’hat rotates around his head to match the direction of the sun.

            We drove a ways down the Ugab riverbed. The rocky hillsrose around us, abrupt and striped with layers of diagonal sediment. Later Iwould see an aerial photo of the Ugab desert, and from that height the long,curving hills look like the ridges on your fingerprint. It’s impossible to goin a straight line to anywhere, and every narrow valley looks alike, but Abelseemed to know exactly where he was leading us.

            The car heaved itself over rocks and shifted from side toside as we made our way; Josh and I were thrown around constantly, gripping thebars tightly to keep from falling off. We went around a bend and foundourselves in front of the Brandbergs (173 meters from their base, in fact; Iwas in charge of the rangefinder for our game flight/HID data, and took theliberty of rangefinding everything in sight). The mountains were red-black andsolid rock, layered behind each other in various shades of darkness, shootingup straight from the shrubland like something from Lord of the Rings. Darkclouds haloed the highest peaks as if the mountains themselves were steaming.We crept by in our vehicles, stumbling over the not-really-a-road and feelingprofoundly small.

            We pulled around into another valley and stopped beside aboulder, the size of a large cooler, shiny black and satin-smooth as if it hadbeen polished. We put our hands on the rock; it was warm. It looked like alumpy black egg. There was nothing else like it around. If you peered closelyenough, the surface was scratched faintly in all directions, as if it had beenrubbed with sandpaper. Shamira sniffed the rock, then wandered off,uninterested.

            Abel made us all guess what it was, but nobody had anyclue. “Glaciers?” we said. “A weapon? An enormous fossilized grub?”

            It was, in fact, a rhino rubbing stone, rubbed forthousands of years by thousands of rhinos. Somehow all the animals in an areaselect a particular rock, and for generations they would come to scratchtheir bellies on it. The Chosen Rock, you could call it.

            Not far from the rubbing stone we found our first tracks,and if I thought that the driving had been rugged before then, well… The LandRover was going over boulders and up and down embankments that I would have hadtrouble making it over on all fours. We pushed through bushes that taller thanwe were, and we charged through deep pools of manky, stinking water ringed withsedge and tamarisk. In the front seat, Abel had a small flat cage, about thesize of a coffee-table book. There were two brown mice in it. Whenever we cameto water he would drop the entire cage in, leave it for a second, and then liftit out, green-gray water streaming off. The two mice would run aroundfrantically, water pearled in their fur, licking moisture off the bars as fastas they could.

            While we’re out here we’ll also be tagging birds of prey,and the mice are our bait. If we see an eagle or a hawk, we place the cage in aclearing and back up out of sight, then hope that the bird goes for it. If theydo, the moment they touch the cage, thin wires tighten around their feet. Thenwe can come back, take measurements, and apply an ankle ring for furtherresearch. (The mice are never actually eaten. Abel had been using the same micefor nearly three years now, though they both show a bit of wear. One is missinghalf its tail, and the other has only one ear after a nasty run-in with a kestrel.The earless mouse is called Van Gogh.)

            We’d been driving about two and a half hours and were inthe thick of a marsh, being slapped on all sides with salvadora and sharpcamel-thorn branches. Josh and I held on tightly and ducked our heads to keepfrom being snagged. Behind us, Jonas and Sam were leaning comfortably back, asif driving through anything and everything was nothing new. Vegetation boweddown before the land rover and sprung into place again in our wake. Because ofour angle, Josh and I saw the edge first; I had a moment’s consciousness of ahole directly in front of us and then the car was falling, tilting like a shipgoing down at sea. Josh and I—before I even had time to think!—scrambled tohigh ground, and were balanced on the side of a single rail by the time the carcame to rest, not quite on its side but mostly there. It took more scramblingand pushing through weeds, and I walkedover the passenger side, and then we were all standing around, scratchedand bloody from thorns, looking at a keeled-over truck. A very heavykeeled-over truck. Hm.

            In the cab, the mice were squeaking frantically.

            Pretty soon the other truck came barreling through thebrush and we tied the vehicles together and hung ourselves off one side andpulled, very slowly, until we’d eased the truck back over the escarpment. Andthen, once it was upright again? Well, then I climbed back onto the roof.

            In the end, we spent a lot of time scrambling and a lotof time driving and we didn’t find anything like a rhino, except one morerubbing stone, and a bunch of zebra and ostrich and oryx and two giraffe. The animalsrespond to us completely differently here, because there’s so much poachingthat they’re terrified of people. At Wereldsend (our base camp) the springboklook at you like you’re in their way, but here? They’re running up the slopesby the time you turn the corner into the far side of the valley, half akilometer away.

So excited to be starting my first Jan-Plan (I missed the one last year)! Class is supposed to be light and things less busy than usual, so I plan to learn a good programming language, among other things. A friend tells me I'll be more busy than I think. We'll see...

I walk out onto the snow-covered balcony. It's supposed to be freezing outside. I can barely feel the cold now, except when a savvy clump of snow sneaks into my boots. 

I have only one Chinese lit. class going on at 10 a.m, which is the earliest I've had a class in ages. To make sure I  can actually get up that early, I did a little practice run last night and the night before. The first day I got up at 3p.m or so. Today I overshot and got up at 8 a.m. 9 would be ideal. 

Made a few interesting discoveries about Colby over Christmas break. How homely and warm Waterville can be, if only one goes downtown and finds out, for instance. Also, how dead and cold Colby looks on New Year's eve.

It's showing some life again now, but it's still cold. Under a few layers of warm stuff, though, I can barely feel the cold. 

7:00 PM-Monday, December 14 

I enter my study carrel to begin a 25-page paper for my Government seminar due at noon the next day. I am joined by Lindsey Anderson, my carrel buddy. Pages written: 0. Hours until it's due: 17.

8:20 PM-Monday, December 14

Finished my outline. Time to watch some funny youtube videos.

10:04 PM-Monday, December 14

Two pages into my introduction, my hand cramps up. I massage it.

10:45 PM-Monday, December 14

Hungry now. I go to the spa and get a blueberry muffin. When I get back, I show Lindsey the youtube video of the pelican eating the pigeon.

11:29 PM-Monday, December 14 

Lindsey leaves. Time to get serious. Hours until it's due: 12. Pages left to write: 22.

1:30 AM-Tuesday, December 15

I go for a bathroom break and get distracted by a book about jazz singers in the civil rights movement.

2:56 AM-Tuesday, December 15

The library closes at 3:00, so the student-workers come around to tell everyone to leave. I hide in the bathroom.

3:15 AM-Tuesday, December 15

I come out of the bathroom when all the lights go off.

4:34 AM-Tuesday, December 15

14 pages written. Feeling very tired by this point. 

4:40 AM-Tuesday, December 15

To my knowledge, I'm the only person on the thrid floor. So why can I hear voices?  I lock the carrel door.

5:11 AM-Tuesday, December 15

This library is straight-up filled with ghosts.

7:30 AM-Tuesday, December 15

Feeling pretty weird. Maybe I shouldn't have had that energy drink.

9:21 AM-Tuesday, December 15

I think I'm starting to hallucinate from fatigue. 5 pages to go.

10:14 AM-Tuesday, December 15

My computer seems like it's really far away from me. My arms stretch on for miles in order to reach it. I'm typing really slowly, but that's okay, because time has slowed down at the same rate.

10:37 AM-Tuesday, December 15

The keyboard is bending in a u-shape to accomodate my giant hands.  Each keystroke is thunder in my ears.

11:40 AM-Tuesday, December 15

Finished. I take a moment to refocus my vision, because I'm now seeing through some sort of blue filter. Then I bang out the bibliography.

11:53 AM-Tuesday, December 15

Printing. Hurry up...

11:54 AM-Tuesday, December 15

Paper jam!

11:56 AM-Tuesday, December 15

Fixed paper jam, finishing printing. Staple.

11:57 AM-Tuesday, December 15

Running to Diamond. From the sudden rush of cold air on my crotch, I realize my fly is open. Don't care.

12:00 PM-Tuesday, December 15

It is good-God-why, I-look-like-I-just-suffered-a-bad-breakup-because-this-cold-is-aggressively-making-my-eyes-water, please-make-an-offering-to-a-sun-god-and-I-mean-now freezing outside. 

Normally, I'm pretty good about the winter weather, chirping to prospective students about "layers!" and "finding ways to walk through as many buildings as possible!" But there's a point you reach, living on a hilly campus in Maine that has an unfortunate abundance of wind tunnels, where it's hibernate or freeze.

Which may be why there's a kind of mutation taking place on campus. Students braving the cold for finals and coffee breaks are suddenly turning into half-human, half-animal hybrids. Heads descend as far down into coat collars and scarves as possible. We move ploddingly along in our boots so we don't slip in the snow. And when we get inside, we have a tendency to snap. We're the college-age mutant Colby turtles: no sewers or weird chemical reactions required.

(I call Donatello.)

Loosely defined, epidemiology is the study of disease-the who, what, when, where, why, and how. Epidemiology is the basic science of public health, which aims to "prevent disease, prolong life, and promote health at population level," Scott said. Why study disease? he asked. "The global death rate is still one-hundred percent." The epidemiologist's job is to analyze and observe in order to "maximize the amount of time people are healthy."

Epidemiologists, he said, describe disease, investigate outbreaks, and design and implement interventions. Disease isn't randomly distributed amongst the population. Risk factors target more susceptible groups. Therefore, treatment on a patient-by-patient basis is less efficient than intervention or a long-lasting treatment for the group as a whole. Epidemiology and public health should work together, Scott said.

Don't doctors do the same thing? No, Scott said. The goals of medicine and the goals of public health are different. Medicine assesses a patient's health and provides a one-time treatment regimen. If the patient is cured, then all is well. Public health, on the other hand, with the help of information provided by epidemiology, assesses disease across a population and how it can be prevented or managed in different groups in the population. Policies are then developed to treat the entire population and to assure services that are available to everyone.

This spring Scott will offer a course Topics in Epidemiology. Students expressed interest not only in enrolling, but in researching organizations he discussed in his talk-local and national disease surveillance initiatives and the World Health Organization-in hopes of learning about trends and recent disease outbreaks.

I'm stating this succinctly, because I'm worried if I focus too hard on the facts - like, hey, ONE SEMESTER LEFT OF COLBY IN YOUR LIFE, ANNELISE, ONE SEMESTER LEFT OF PRETTY MILLER LIBRARY AND SPA CURLY FRIES AND THAT HOMEMADE STRAWBERRY SOFT SERVE IN FOSS - I'll end up curled in a fetal position at the foot of my bed, clutching at my Colby sweatshirt like a security blanket and maybe listening to "Hail, Colby Hail" on repeat.

So, instead, succinctly: classes ended yesterday. I always expect the end of each semester to be accompanied by the kind of half-baked nostalgia we had in high school, where classes ended when the school year did and suddenly all those hours of calculus revision or memorization of the Chinese dynasties took on a distant, rosy hue. At Colby, it's pretty standard and non-rosy: course evaluations, the final tidbits of knowledge we must know before the final exam, reminders of due dates and page lengths. 

It's business as usual, which I appreciate, mainly because it's the kind of attitude that prevents me from hyperventilating about (gulp) leaving. But I also wish there could be some more warm and fuzzy recognition of the great work our professors do, and the communities we build in class. Warm and fuzzy like when two boys in my international studies senior seminar clobbered our professor with a bear hug as we filed out for the last time, or like the final moments of my Fiction Writing II class - yes, the class where we made waffles that one time - when our effervescent professor, Jenny Boylan, smiled around at us and reached for the hands next to her.

"Let's hold hands," she instructed, and we all giggled like school children afraid of cooties. "Oh, come on, you can wash your hands after! Yeesh."

She waited as we awkwardly clasped hands. Somewhere across the room, a classmate murmured, "Kumbaya, my class, kumbaya..."

"Thank you for a semester of wonderful stories," Jenny said, and we shushed. "Of wonderful workshops, and wonderful people. It's been a pleasure, and I wish you every success and happiness."

"Thanks, Jenny," we chorused a little bashfully. We sat connected for a moment longer, all of us smiling. When we broke hands, it was business as usual again - the scraping of chairs and bustle of binders being stuffed into backpacks.

But even as I'm seeking out the composed and businesslike to tackle the realities of a swiftly passing senior year, this kind of emotional recognition is important, hugely so. And it wouldn't be half as meaningful if there weren't all the professors and classmates who have made learning here such a pleasure. Kumbaya, my Colby, and good luck with finals.