last day on the ridge
When I went to campus today for the last time as one of its employees, it was the 4th time this week I forgot to bring along my digital camera.
Before the first lot of books were packed and brought home last Sunday, I had meant to take some pictures of the booklined office I had occupied since 2004. noisynotes and I used two suitcases and went up and down twice, emptying books into the boot of his Honda Jazz.
Did I mention that I had bought only three books on my recent trip to London? It was the memory of the books that were patiently waiting for me to move them home from the office - I lost almost all interest in acquiring new ones.
T.A. (teaching assistant) M kindly helped out on Tuesday. Together we made about 5 rounds, carting books from office to car boot. When we had finished we stood and stared at the unlikely, lofty load in the boot and M said: "I can't wait for the day my collection of books gets this big." It's a point of view I used to share but no longer. Which makes M the perfect person to give a couple of books to, including an unread Ivanhoe and a collection of David Lodge's Structuralist and Post-structuralist readings on 19th and 20th C literature.
After the books the following had to be packed or binned: papers, files, stationery, pictures on the walls, cards, postcards, post-it notes, and other nonsense on the memo board. I won't go into it except that I managed to make myself throw away my undergraduate notes on Shakespeare and the Victorians. As for the notes accumulated during the PhD, I had wanted to bin the whole lot but somehow SOMEHOW! 60% of the bloody things escaped and made it into the car boot. No doubt they'll sit in some box or cupboard and continue to rot away which is what they've been doing the last 3 years.
"It's good you kept them. Maybe you'll write your big book on Dante some day," said a professor from another department at the car park. He did not say anything about the lime green armchair that blocked the rear view entirely. "Yes, some day. When I become an Italian. Or take on an Italian name," I quipped.
Today it was the turn of the course folders on the desktop of the iMac in the office. I put them all in a thumb drive, wrote two emails, called a friend, and then noisynotes came to collect me.
No photographs have been taken.
Before the first lot of books were packed and brought home last Sunday, I had meant to take some pictures of the booklined office I had occupied since 2004. noisynotes and I used two suitcases and went up and down twice, emptying books into the boot of his Honda Jazz.
Did I mention that I had bought only three books on my recent trip to London? It was the memory of the books that were patiently waiting for me to move them home from the office - I lost almost all interest in acquiring new ones.
T.A. (teaching assistant) M kindly helped out on Tuesday. Together we made about 5 rounds, carting books from office to car boot. When we had finished we stood and stared at the unlikely, lofty load in the boot and M said: "I can't wait for the day my collection of books gets this big." It's a point of view I used to share but no longer. Which makes M the perfect person to give a couple of books to, including an unread Ivanhoe and a collection of David Lodge's Structuralist and Post-structuralist readings on 19th and 20th C literature.
After the books the following had to be packed or binned: papers, files, stationery, pictures on the walls, cards, postcards, post-it notes, and other nonsense on the memo board. I won't go into it except that I managed to make myself throw away my undergraduate notes on Shakespeare and the Victorians. As for the notes accumulated during the PhD, I had wanted to bin the whole lot but somehow SOMEHOW! 60% of the bloody things escaped and made it into the car boot. No doubt they'll sit in some box or cupboard and continue to rot away which is what they've been doing the last 3 years.
"It's good you kept them. Maybe you'll write your big book on Dante some day," said a professor from another department at the car park. He did not say anything about the lime green armchair that blocked the rear view entirely. "Yes, some day. When I become an Italian. Or take on an Italian name," I quipped.
Today it was the turn of the course folders on the desktop of the iMac in the office. I put them all in a thumb drive, wrote two emails, called a friend, and then noisynotes came to collect me.
No photographs have been taken.
posted by wheyface at 9:56 PM
6 Comments:
Hmmm...somehow, after reading your post, something tells me that you'll be taking lots of photographs at your new workplace. Just my intuition. Still, a new chapter has begun. How deliciously exciting it will be on your first day. Ha! :-)
ooh, enjoy your new workplace. I'm very sure it'll be noisier but more friendly. hey, you'll be nearer my workplace now - so lunch!!!
hi plain forgiven and ampulet y:
ya, it's been great at the new work place. people have a sense of humour and so far no one has sent me a "gentle reminder".
tell you more when we meet up. lunch!!!
It's true that I now tend to give books away rather than hoard them (having said that I still have all the course notes from my London MA, all though I did get rid of the BA ones some years back).
With age and the responsibilities of living (and loving!), you become divested of certain illusions that once sustained you in your youth, like writing that big book/thesis on XXX (I had that one too). Also with age comes moving, all that moving-on and moving-to, and after a while it's much easier to acknowledge a pile of unread books as clutter rather than repositories of wisdom waiting to be unlocked.
Ooh loving! More info needed, please. :p
Hey, orangeclouds (sorry wheyface --- hijack your space to pay a compliment to someone else),
Also with age comes moving, all that moving-on and moving-to, and after a while it's much easier to acknowledge a pile of unread books as clutter rather than repositories of wisdom waiting to be unlocked.
---- I LOVE the above sentence. :-)
Yeah, pure joy in a beautiful sentence. :-)
Plainforgiven
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