Library Rantings

Working at the library is different every day. If it’s the first week of a new semester, there are lots of questions from incoming freshman and transfer students. In the summer, it’s a little more casual. We usually shift books from one section to another and organize.

In the summer of 2013, I worked with another student at the library. We were both English majors, but he was a year ahead of me. I liked to ask him about the professors. Some he admired. Some he hated, but he always had funny stories about his experiences.

This particular morning I brought in my 10-minute play I wrote for Professor Nee’s playwriting class. The Diagnosis was my first work of fiction. Based on a true story, it was something I had thought about for a long time. The story was just waiting to be told and here was an opportunity to dramatise the narrative. I was happy with the results.

He said he liked it, then asked if I wanted to see something he wrote for class. Well, I read his personal essay and actually cried.

It was actually a piece of his soul, put on paper, for everyone to see.

It was about the death of his brother. describing the feelings and how he deals with it even today. Well, it moved me like nothing else I’ve read. It wasn’t just words on a paper. It was his heart’s blood, smeared for all of us to see.

That’s the writing I want to create.

For me English isn’t just about writing and reading great classical literature. It’s about creatively thinking and communicating with other people. That’s why I’m studying English at UMass Dartmouth.

Well, he graduated last year. Now, I’m looking ahead to my senior year, but until then it’s back to shifting books.