Unexpected reading

Tentative Conclusions, declared the book. In blue ink above the title was a scrawled addition: BANALITIES.

Flip back a couple pages, and there’s a conversation in pencil and black. “I don’t understand what he is talking about,” someone had wrote.

“Don’t ask me!” In pencil.

“If you don’t understand it, then you haven’t been reading!”

“Tut tut.” Was the concise conclusion.

I learned an important lesson today: when you are studying at Cambridge, and you brave the massive University Library for the first time, and you finally find your book after literally an hour of wandering lost… when you do these things, you are not alone. You’re one of a hundred, a thousand.

Students had been reading that exact same book since before I was born. 1981, 82, 82, 83, dates stamped on the inner flap of the cover declared the book’s long history. Tucked between the long and sometimes tedious statements of the author were quips, complaints and insights.

And there I was, hidden on the fifth floor of a library that holds a copy of every British book in print (or so rumor has it…) Just reading, writing, taking notes like so many others have done. Some of them have won peace prizes. Another developed the original computer. And the DNA double helix strand? Oh yeah, discovered here. …wow. Humbling? Yes. Terrifying? A bit.

Picture of our great hall, where portraits of all these amazin folks hang on the walls

I imagine this library will dominate a huge part of my life while I’m at school. Contrary to what the ‘no classes!’ would seem to suggest, Cambridge knows how to keep a student buried in academia.

Time to add some notes of my own.