Today I learned a new Harvard building! You know that building to the right of Lamont? Me neither till today! In all these years, I have not only never been inside that building, or known what it is, but I've never even really registered its existence. So today I walked in and announced my presence to the dude at the desk:

Me: Hi! I've been here five years and have never been in this building. Where am I?
Dude: This is the Houghton rare books library.
Me: Whoa, that exists?
Dude: ...yes.
Me: I mean, I always thought it was just one of those Hollis designations for a particular collection, not an actual physical location.
Dude: Rare books generally need to be stored somewhere secure. And physical.
Me: This makes sense.

Next up: Liz learns to navigate new Lamont floor-numbering, avoids further embarrassing attempts to locate Shakespeare in the government docs stacks.

Not you, Weinbl.

My adviser told me I couldn't take his limited-enrollment studio unless I agreed to not dominate the conversation and let the other kids try to answer questions even if I know the answer. How do you respond to that?? Hold on while I go look up the answer in my diary from middle school. Jeez...

I told him to give me a cue when I should back off. I'm imagining a variation on Jim Marvin's hand-wave of "More alto! More alto! More alto! Not you, Weinbl."*

But if nothing else, I can always find a way to blame Ben. To wit:

Me: so my program has this required session tomorrow on how to play well with others.
Ben: is there a follow up session called "what to do when you discover the others are idiots"?

This is the source of all my problems. File under: What I'll Learn Tomorrow.


*using my fas surname as a super-sneaky pseudonym for the googlebot