My First Midterm & Other Things

My Greek History teacher recently made us take our midterm last Thursday. The same day, I worked my first time at Agnes' post office for my second work-study job. Needless to say, I was a bit stressed. Luckily, I find Greek history incredibly fascinating, and it was never really a trouble (except when it came to specifics of Solon's & Kleisthenes' reforms) retaining what I learned. You are probably reading this and thinking: why is she mentioning this? Well, I suppose my main purpose is to lead up to the fact that I'm pretty confident I aced the midterm. It felt so amazing. The joy I felt even made me briefly consider majoring in Classics. The idea is still up for debate.

Alan Lightman, the physicist and author of Einstein's Dreams -- a wonderful book that I highly recommend -- came to our campus for 2-3 days to speak to us both about his book and about the connections of art and science. Irony seemed to take a liking to me those few days. While sitting in on his first lecture, I formulated a question and wrote it down, seeing as I figured I'd forget it as soon as I walked up to the microphone, shaking and stuttering. I don't exaggerate when I say that the moment when the last speaker sat down and I decided to stand up, the Q&A session ended. Just like that. I was destroyed for a few hours, at least. It seems that whenever I gather up the courage and confidence to go outside of my comfort zone, I am completely and utterly let down. This has happened in so many instances, which is why I later was afraid of the confidence I felt in regards to my Greek midterm.

So, Mr. Lightman signed my book. He was an interesting person; I kept on running into him throughout his visit. It was odd. When I walked into the dining hall to get breakfast, he simply walked right past me from the kitchen/cafeteria/buffet area and sat down, all by himself, to eat his breakfast before his morning lecture. My friend and I contemplated sitting with him, but then we thought that maybe -- being the "famous guy" on campus -- he would want some alone time. But eating alone, I think, is one of the worst feelings ever. I was torn, to say the least. I never approached him, but I still wonder.

Then, I attended a second Q&A session in the Fine Arts building. He was directly discussing his book, so I figured it would be an even better (and more appropriate) place to ask my question. However, the demons of irony working against me once again, he ended up answering my question in an explanation, more or less. It was certainly a "palm-to-face" sort of moment. So I kept quiet again.

You're probably wondering what sort of question I came up with. I was pretty proud of it, because I wanted to ask about something that intrigued me the most about his story. As an aspiring writer myself, his approach and storytelling methods really opened my eyes. I wrote:

"The thing that struck me most about your novel was that you took something as constant and given like time and turned it upside-down. People may create different races, places, and events, but the function of time -- at least, as far as I've read -- remains the same. Wanting to be a writer myself, this had never occurred to me. I'm wondering how it occurred to you?"

Is that not a pretty good question? To give some background, Einstein's Dreams is about the famous physicist's fictional dreams regarding worlds where time works differently. For example, in one world, the higher up you were, the less time had an effect, much like gravity. So people living higher up were higher up in society and lived longer, supposedly. Isn't that interesting? Mr. Lightman created several of these highly unique worlds, and in many ways, I was awe-struck by his creativity.

For our response to the book, I wrote a not-so-short short story about one of his worlds. It ended up being 11 pages long, while other people just wrote simple essays or poems. I'm not saying other people didn't go all out -- because some of them got crafty and blew my mind -- but I put a good amount of time and effort into mine. I'm pretty proud of how it turned out, too. I'm really fond of the main character I created, Seymour. It was a neat accomplishment. The lady in charge of presenting the responses to Mr. Lightman said she'd be sure to show it to him, but I'm not sure if she did or not. I guess I'll never know.