n “And that’s how proteins are formed using chaperoning which are themselves another type of protein…” (The interesting things learned from a walk down the street,” Oct. 2, p. 7) On his way out of his natural science lecture, he thought of all the reading he ought to have already been familiar with before his upcoming exams.
He looked outside the fifth floor windows to see the gorgeous day outside and decided to read on the BU Beach instead.
While walking down the stairs, he thought to himself, “If I ever get rich and useless and want to give money back to BU, I’m going to give it to the College of General Studies so they can put in some darn elevators!”
He stopped by the study center on the third floor to see if any of his friends were there but instead, heard the humanities professors discussing the nuances of silent films — remembering the Chaplin classic he was forced to watch and chuckling to himself.
He then made his way to the vending machine room on the first floor and ran into his social science professor from last year to discuss his current Russian history course and the performance of the Boston Red Sox over the last few months — both being unsatisfactory.
Leaving the building he made his way down Commonwealth Avenue, wondering as always, why so many people smoke outside the College of Fine Arts? Maybe it’s the painters who smoke — trying to extinguish their existential angst or fulfill some psychological deficiency.
Different thoughts flashed through his mind as he crossed the bridge relating to the two concepts — Freud, Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown,” Looking-Glass Theory, Frankenstein’s doppelganger, Virginia Woolf, Joseph Cornell, Andy Warhol, class-consciousness, Marx, Lenin — the Russian history exam!
Ending his stream of consciousness, he realized he was standing right in front of Marsh Chapel and that he is also behind in his Lenin readings — crap! Good thing it was the perfect day to sit outside and read.
Heading toward the grass mounds, he saw some people staring at the steel statue. He went over and heard one person calling it a “social commentary on America’s need to break free from isolationism in the early 20th century”. He thought, “Wow some people have too much time on their hands,” while someone said something else. He started to add his own opinion, “I think it’s really cool how…” when he noticed a butterfly flying overhead.
Realizing that in this relatively big city one rarely ever sees butterflies, the simple childhood pleasure of chasing the butterfly overtook him. Immediately he recalled his humanities professor’s words, “The Socratic ‘good life’ was about the quest for eternal truth, Sophists are all about pleasure. So how does one decide? What is the good life?”
While thinking about the question, he sat down on the mound realizing the irony of it all — a year ago he couldn’t care less about Socrates and now he’s debating it in his head!
Amused by the thought, he then delved into details of the 10th Bolshevik Party Congress: “We have been unsuccessful in convincing the masses…”
Shwetika Baijal
CGS ’07
SMG ’09