Courtesy of the Honors College :)

The Honors College had a professor from University of North Carolina down to do a lecture here last night, and because he’s the mentor of one of my professors, he taught my British lit class today on Joyce. That was pretty cool, but even cooler is that my professor invited a few graduate students to dinner tonight at a NICE restaurant with this UNC professor. And I was one of them! How awesome is that? I’m here only two months and he invites me…the other three graduate students were like second or third year. It was great. We got to talk academic and non-academic stuff, I got to meet my professor’s wife for the first time (she’s really fun), I didn’t make a complete ignorant fool of myself…

I decided I like the part of grad school where I get to hang out with smart people, and people who will actually talk about good books in a deeper way than “Yeah, I liked it” or “It sucked.” Yesterday the Bibliography class (aka “bane of first year grad students’ existence”) went down to the Ransom Center, the huge research library at UT-Austin, and so I got to ride in a bus with smart grad students for like four hours. Of course, all first years, so we all feel really dumb and overwhelmed at this point. But compared with, you know, the average undergrad. Smart. And they talk about interesting things. The part of grad school I don’t like is when we have such a short amount of time to do things that we don’t know how to do. And when it feels like trade school in the sense that I feel like I’m not learning literature, I’m learning how to do things–how to edit manuscripts, how to publish papers, how to present at conferences… And when everyone assumes that you want to get a PhD and be a professor for the rest of your life, and when you hint that you don’t, no one understands.

But yeah. I love being around the intellectual stimulation, and the general milieu of the grad student experience, I just don’t like having to, you know, participate when I feel so inadequate to the task. I’m somewhere between “academic” and “layperson” on a sliding scale, and I don’t know exactly where that means I fit.

However, if I get invited to one of these things again, I’m DEFINITELY going, because I had a great time, great food, and great conversation. And if you ever happen to be in Waco, check out the restaurant 1424. (It’s at 1424 Washington Ave…apparently naming isn’t all it used to be.) It’s a bit pricey, but really worth it for a special occasion. Mom, Dad, next time you’re down. You’ll love it.