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a bit of nostalgia

I am very happy with the life I lead, and have no real wish to go back to academia. The adjustment would be hard, in the extreme. However, there are a few things I miss. The moments in the classroom when a difficult point suddenly comes clear, and you see that on the faces in front of you. The sincere, hard working students with real curiosity; the ones you come across, once in a while, who have that something extra, that flash of insight that promises great things to come.

And this: compiling a long list of obscure references, articles from journals published in out of the way places for a few months only; newspaper reports that appeared two hundred years ago; out of print books held out of maybe five libraries in the whole country. I could put a long list together and send it to the library, and the results would start trickling in right away. In my departmental mailbox, every day, another book or photocopied article or a note: interlibrary loan should have x y and z by the end of the week.

So now I have to do the heavy lifting myself. Last year I spent thousands of dollars on books: new and out of print, on journals and newspapers, most of which I really don't need to hold onto. I could sell the volumes I don't need anymore on ebay, I suppose, or take them into one of the local used book stores or donate them to a good cause. But I always pause, worried that I will have a need for that diary of a fur trapper at some point in the future.

So that's my lament. Back to work.

February 24, 2005 05:31 PM

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Posted by: danielle at February 27, 2005 03:31 PM

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