Serenity

Main Reading Room

Thompson Library OSU

Interesting how our definitions and understandings change with age.  People talk about the hustle and bustle of a college campus, how enervating and exhausting it can be to race from one class to another, lug backpacks around, hurry to a lecture, then on to a lab, then grab a bite of lunch and rush to yet another classroom.  Sounds impossible to keep up with.  Here's one of the interesting, and gratifying things about a return to campus at late (late) middle age.  I find it instead of enervating, really energizing.  Immersed in the atmosphere of campus, I'm renewed every time.  Part of it is knowing the other side; being driven by the necessity of work, career, debt, cash flow, family responsibility, employer demands--that's enervating.  Being responsible to the intellectual demands of the campus energizes and gratifies.  And knowing there are havens, such as the main library's reading room, shown above, is deeply satisfying to the soul and body.  Also, the 'other side' lays claim to such gratifications as truth & practicality versus uncertainty & theory.  Since returning to college, I've found renewed solace in the theoretical, the uncertain, the demand for further investigation.

(Winged Victory of Samothrace, the statue depicted above was sculpted to celebrate a naval victory.  Its outward thrust has been compared to the bowsprit of a ship, arching forward into the elements.  Kind of like an older student charging forward into the unknown)