The Fullest Day

Today was perhaps one of the fullest days of my life which began and will presumably end in the same bed. I awoke at six to write a formal analysis of the Renzo Piano Building Workshop design for the new The New York Times headquarters that are being constructed in Manhattan. I ate breakfast and then made the usual tour of Russian History lecture, 20th Century Italian Art, Shakespearean Drama, and Russian History discussion.

The first two classes came off without a hitch, but in Shakespearean Drama, our professor decided that we needed an in-class dramatic reading to more fully appreciate the hilarity of the Pyramus and Thisbe play-within-a-play in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Volunteers were few, and the professor became rather animated in his attempt to find a Pyramus. I was sitting two-thirds of the way back, but there I was with a huge grin on my face, being amused by our professor's antics, and that's what did me in. He picked me out of the more than a hundred students in the room, and I found myself, a math major, reading Shakespeare to a room full of English majors and feeling altogether jittery about the whole thing. I think I did alright, really. I switched two words, added a 'the,' and mispronounced 'vild,' but I must have read ten or fifteen lines for each of those three mistakes. I'm not cut out to be an actor and certainly not a sight-reader.

I continued to be rather verbal in Russian History discussion and enjoyed that class. I had an hour or so back here to get started on my math homework before I set off for the Elvehjem Art Museum for my fifth class, European Architectural History. I got to drop in to the office of my professor for a few minutes before I attended a behind-the-scenes tour of the museum, and consumed some very good cranberry bars and raspberry punch. By the time I got home, it was time for the final presidential debate, in which both candidates were their strongest yet. I've been working with mixed results on my math homework, but it's time for bed now.