[Today’s run: 3.5 miles]
As I started off on my jog this evening I remembered two things from my college days.
First, I was a freshman at John Brown University. I lived in the dormitory, like most everyone did. One of the professors, or somebody, had a film thing. Every other week or so they would have a film to watch, usually some kind of classic. I don’t know if this was part of a class or a club or what. These were still the days of reels and projectors. This time they showed a black and white 3-reel film of a woman in post-WW2 Europe. The first part she was doing pretty well. For the second reel things had definitely gone down hill and with her much older, alone and hearing voices of family members and friends who were no longer alive. It was an interesting transition. And just when I was starting to get into it, the credits rolled. They had put the third reel in by mistake! They started to show the second reel and it totally ruined the effect so I walked out, along most of the rest of the audience. It was kind of fun.
Second, a few years later, I was now a student at Iowa State and I worked part time as a research helper with an experimental nuclear physics group. When I started at that job they had a post-doc student, a graduate student (my friend Jeff who was toward the beginning of his PhD work), and a long time PhD candidate who seemed to be stuck. This guy had an office, but he never did anything. I mean, he would sit all day at his desk and do nothing. This was before cell phones, laptops, video games. Maybe he read books, I don’t remember. Mostly I remember he did nothing. I used to enjoy talking to him. He was an interesting guy. But he didn’t finish his PhD. Eventually his time ran out and he left.