How to Torture Elizabeth

How to torture Elizabeth:

Invite many of her favorite childhood authors (Koingsberg, Peck, Lowery, Lemony Snicket) to a conference debating serious issues and themes in children’s literature. Now, hold this conference not only in the same building as her, but RIGHT ACROSS THE HALLWAY from a class that she absolutely must attend.

Don’t let Elizabeth into the conference!

Fill the hallway with all the children’s books she’d love to buy and have the authors sign, but don’t let her have any money, and – now this is the important part – make sure that during the 6 hour class that Elizabeth must attend while her favorite authors are across the hall is just loud enough so that during the day she can just barely, at the edge of her perceptions, here loud laughter and other sounds of merriment.

This actually happened to me Saturday. I had to attend my last management class, it was just deadly important for me to do so. But right across the hall from my management class was a symposium on children’s lit with some of my favorite authors. It was pure torture. I worshiped Koingsberg as a kid – I must have read _The_Mixed- Up_Files_of_Mrs._Basil_E._Frankwiler as well as _Jennifer,_Hecate,_MacBeth,_William_McKinley_and_Me,_Elizabeth, about 500 times at least. And she was right across the hall from me all Saturday. And I couldn’t go.

This pretty much cements my opinion that studying Library Science in Boston is like studying Art in Rome. I mean, when you’re in the middle of everything, you’re just going to miss some things, no matter how hard you try to learn it all it just won’t fit in your head. And yes, the management class was really that important. It was taught by a professor who has written for Library Journal most all of his career and is just considered to be the best at what he does. Saturday, he was teaching us how to get good jobs. So I had to go. Not to mention the fact that I paid $3,000 for that course and it only met 6 times. That averages out to $500 a class – about the cost of getting into the children’s conference across the hall, by the way.

So if I had paid the entrance fee and skipped the class that day, it would have cost me an even grand to be in the same room as Koingsberg. Worth it? Probably. But having cut back to just one part time job, I no longer have the cash.

Other than that, not a lot has happened. We had a “heat wave” here in Boston last week where a couple of days had temps up in the mid nineties, and everyone laid about whining the way I did back in February when I thought I was going to freeze to death.

I have once again entered finals week for my classes. Thursday I woke up so tense in the morning that I had muscle spasms in my back – painful but not as bad as the migraines I can sometimes work myself into. I have resolved not to date anyone again until I’m out of grad school chiefly because of how neurotic I get around finals week every semester. During finals week last Spring I got so worked up I thought my boyfriend at the time loved his computer more than me. Of course, it turned out that I was right about that, but you can see how worried I get over finals can affect my thinking. My mother always wanted me to be a lawyer, but I can assure you that the stress of such a job would kill me, after observing my behavior through graduate school finals.

Golly, next December will be my final finals. That’ll be nice.