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To piggy-back on that last post, I’m often asked what it’s like to be a professor on the campus where I was once a student. My answer is true and unwavering: it’s weird how not weird it is. Which is hard to explain, but I’ll try:
Yes, the campus has grown a lot in the years between then and now, and a lot has changed. Linthicum hall is standing, moldy and empty, and a HUGE, shiny Liberal Arts Building has taken its place. Lida Lee Tall no longer exists. The Center for the Arts has been pretty updated, too, but I was here when those changes were officially called “Done” so that’s kind of different. Oh, and there are all these new dorms for people to live in where I used to have to park my car as a Freshman. They are also huge and shiny (and probably pretty liberal, too, I would guess).
And I guess that would be weird, if I had moved away for seven years and came back to campus and thought, “Wow! When did all of this happen?! What campus is this?!” But I knew Lida Lee Tall was going. And after that, it was really only a matter of time before Linthicum met the same fate; there were already predictions at the time of my graduation that it would be obsolete/reconstructed ‘soon.’ So yes, while it’s a little weird that there aren’t people smoking cigarettes near the main entrance to Linthicum Hall, and weirder still that I can’t just walk around in there if I want to, it’s not really a shock. And the new dorms? I moved off-campus my sophomore year, what do I really care about new dorms? My freshman dorm is still standing (for now).
Really, the key element of why it’s not weird is this: I’ve changed, too. Towson University and I, we’ve both grown up. You can see traces of who we were in 2003 or 2007, but ultimately we are new animals, different from what we were then. Sometimes I can almost recall what it felt like to walk around here as a student, but it’s more with a passive interest than with active nostalgia. By and large, students are still walking the same exact paths between buildings that I tread so many times, eating in the same eateries and loudly having what should be intimate conversations with their friends. Students are still students, and the University is still their home. I’m not a student, and I’m not doing those things anymore. It would be pretty grotesque if I did. But I still feel comfortable here, in fact probably much more comfortable than I did pre-graduation.
Ultimately, I think it’s because I’m much more comfortable in my self.
Must be ’cause I’m a Leo. (O:
Her dance moves are incredible, but I beg you: PLEASE stick around for the Michael Jackson impersonations. She just slays me!!
This made me laugh harder than I have laughed at anything in a LOOoong time. My face was soaked with tears. “It may, in fact, be a moth!”
Priceless!
Half-blood Prince preview!
Or if that doesn’t work, try this:
http://www.moviefone.com/movie/harry-potter-and-the-half-blood-prince/27063/trailer?trailerId=2181231
OH MAN.
I want it.
Ridiculous, but I love it. Makes me think of Dr. Forester and Animal Behavior recitations.
(The reference of this video is that honeybees dance to tell the rest of the hive how to get to nectar sources. Waggles, turns, and direction of movement tell the rest of the hive in what direction and how far away the pollen is. Honeybees are the main pollinators for most of our food sources, and they are disappearing for no apparent reason. This is a major ecological concern.)
So the last 48 hours or so?
Tuesday:
-Wake up, get to work at 6:45
-On the road, realize we are being sent to do a show appropriate for 5-10 year-olds for a group of eighth graders, because my boss hates us.
-Get to the school, find out they had a 2-hour delay due to flooding and are feeling slightly chaotic.
-First show is (needless to say) like simultaneously pulling teeth and having your own teeth ripped out.
-Lindsey and I drive around during lunch swearing and contemplating buying a pack of cigarettes.
-Go back to do second show (oh yes, there were two!) and decide to just make complete asses of ourselves and be goofy. It was sort of fun, actually.
-On the way back to the Science Center, weird dashboard lights start blinking on and off. We call our boss, who tells us not to worry and that it’s just an electrical problem. We remain skeptical.
-On Key Highway, the van starts to make weird noises and choke up. At Battery Ave., it loses its ability to accelerate anywhere past 10 mph. We coast it into the Science Center parking lot. Our boss tells us we should load it for the show the next day anyway. When we refuse, she relents and agrees to come up to look at the van. We get out, and it is not only smoking, but smells HORRIBLE.
-Our boss comes out and decides to drive it to the shop a few blocks away. The van won’t go into gear at all now. The CEO comes out and finds the van is leaking transmission fluid. We call a tow.
-I go home.
Wednesday
-Get to work around 6:45
-Rob and I drive about 2 hours to Delaware and perform our first show.
-We drive around trying to find a place to park and eat lunch. The first three parks we go to are a bust, being either golf courses or charging $6 to get in (stupid Delaware).
-We finally find a place that isn’t charging dick-nosed prices just to park. We see an oriole in real-life and play the movie game. It’s fun!
-We go to leave. The van turns on, then everything shuts down. We poke around under the hood, think it’s a fuse problem, then call the school. The principal picks us up, we perform the second show a little late.
-A teacher brings us back to the van, we try to jump (just in case, nothing to lose) and predictably nothing happens. We call Niki and AAA, both of which will get to us in about an hour and a half.
-We play cards and laugh at the whole damn thing.
-Niki and the tow arrive at about the same time. We follow the tow to the auto repair shop, which is closed. We decide to leave a business card in the drop-box. We have no business cards. We write a bootleg one on a scrap of paper and laugh at the whole goddamned thing.
-We return to the school to pick up our equipment. On the way, my friend Jillian calls to tell me a friend from high school has OD’ed and is dead. I comment to my colleagues on the sad state of drug use in my hometown.
-We go to dinner on the Science Center’s dime at a place called “Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse.” There are animatronic animals and awesome statues and lots of kitsch. Our waiter’s name is “Moosebreath.” (I am currnetly eating leftovers.)
-At about 9 pm we pull into the BP on Key Highway. It hits me that one of my friends is dead. I freak out and get hysterical.
-Rob drops me off at home.
Thursday
I called out of work.
Yup. I can’t believe it either. But let me tell you, I fucking LOVE the movie Juno!! I’ve watched it two days in a row and I’ll probably watch it today, too. LOVE IT.
::endtransmission::
