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I finished my fourth essay of the term today. While I'm always happy to finish an essay, I have to say that it's not like the previous two terms, where each essay is one essay closer to the last of term! Hooray!

Nope. This term, each essay is one essay closer to the end. The End. Capital letters, end of term, end of year. Oh, s**t. I've started doing the nostalgic thing, taking those bittersweet moments to stop and enjoy something small.

Case in point: I was walking back from the library last night (the Pembroke library). It was about 11 p.m. There weren't many people walking around, and as I walked into the main quad, that one, I slowed for a second. Looking across the expanse of perfectly-tailored Oxford grass, up at the Hall, the dormitories lining the sides of the quad with gargoyles peering down, flowering vines winding their way around the doorways into various staircases...

...I realized, suddenly, that in three or four months, this might all seem like a dream.
And so I slowed my steps just a little (it was cold!), just enough to look longer than usual at that scene that I pass at least a dozen times per day. I know I'll miss it, but I don't think I have any idea how much.

***
On a completely different note, some quotes from my absolute favorite new historian, Patricia Nelson Limerick. At the end of her book, Something in the Soil, which is a new perspective on Western American history (SO good; I had never read anything on the topic and she had me hooked. And laughing. Out loud.), she has two short essays. The first is meant for academics/professors who are transitioning into public speaking--a How To Not Be A Boring Academic, so to speak.

But the second, the second was called Limerick's Rules of Verbal Etiquette, and they are brilliant. See for yourself.

"Words are our friends, and people should not put their friends in awkward positions. When an author mistreats them, words and sentences feel discomfort, even pain, and certainly resentment. And yet, unlike human being, words have no capacity to hold a grudge. As soon as the writer relieves their misery, words and sentences will work wholeheartedly for the writer's case. The empathy, commitment, and attention that produce good relationships among people match, exactly, the qualities that build friendship between writers and words."

"Sentences want to be limber, flexible, sleek, and agile. Often, this means they want to be small and manageable in size. They do not want to be bulky, awkward, and overweight, nor do they want to be overloaded or overdepressed. They especially resent having to carry around an excess of prepositional phrases or polysyllables."

"When you ask a group of sentences to form a paragraph, they expect to arrive in the paragraph and find that they have a lot in common. They expect, moreover, to find that one sentence is in charge of the paragraph (the topic sentence), and ready to introduce the other sentences to each other and remind them why they have all gotten together in the same paragraph. When, instead, they show up in the paragraph and discover that they have nothing in common and no one to introduce them, they are as uncomfortable and lonely as people who have arrived at a party where they know no one."

Isn't she great?

Anyways. These have been two very wordy, academic posts in a row. Next up: Paris!