|Pretty as a (Viewbook) Picture.| Do you remember your college's viewbook? Well, firstly, do you remember the deluge of viewbooks that started pouring into your home right around the end of junior year in High School? The better you did on your SAT's, the more viewbooks you probably received. From Occidental University to Juniata College to Harvard. Everyone glossy, typically with pictures of foliage in Fall-color transition, usually at least one time-lapsed photo so lots of students all out of focus at various times in the day captured in the same photograph at the nexus of intracampus commute and commune. I remember my four favorite viewbooks: Columbia (imagine that), Vassar, Harvard, and UPenn. I remember the Vassar viewbook had a photo of a gloriously vivid stained glass window in one of their libraries and a photo of students sitting in the blossoming Shakespeare Garden. The UPenn viewbooks gets snaps for a nice binding -- it was a heavy-stock, creamy off-white, beveled paper with a seal embossed on the cover in navy blue. The Harvard viewbook listed the upper class housing options and I fell in love with this one house that I think was on the Charles River (I could be entirely wrong about that) which had it's own dance studio -- at the time I was still very gung-ho about tap dancing and hated that I had no place to just go and let my feet fly when the mood struck. And then there was Columbia's viewbook... Columbia has yet to produce another one as great. Most of the images were time-lapsed, because Columbia is in the City and the city is fast. At the end, there was a compilation of quick facts (what other speed could they be?) about New York, New York City, Columbia and its students. I love quick facts! And then, one image... the one that convinced me to apply. It was in the upper-right hand corner of a page... small, as if it was just thrown in at the last minute because they'd paid for it to be taken and someone thought it ought to be used: a bird's-eye-view of the campus, probably not long after they'd replaced all the grass (as they do annually). So, in this square of grey city concrete, was a striking strip of green. Imagine it... this green blemish on a greyscape... was a university. How could I not apply? The other image that is a staple component of any viewbook is that of the "class in the professor's home" image. It's usually very softly lit, with lots of warm colors. There are lots of books around, typically a fireplace or hearth of some sort, and lots of wood. Lots of wood. I found myself in this picture today. My CC professor, for the end of term, had us over for an early supper for our last class. The fact that we were discussing Amartya Sen and famine aside, the catered meal was a nice was to cap off a very plentiful semester. The scene looked familiar: the view of the park and the river outside of her window, the Dutch-looking portrait of a philosopher on the wall of the dining room, all of the students crowded around a simply-appointed coffee table. But it didn't hit me until she struck her "professor in her own habitat" pose, another essential component to the photograph. While speaking, while gesticulating, while cultivating young and agile minds, a professor, a good professor, knows to run the gamut of professor poses, and mine is not lacking in her artillery. The particular pose I'm talking about is seated, slightly hunched forward, one arm to the side (but not relaxed -- never relaxed) and the other arm extended in the air, with hand clutching. Although, no, not clutching... not grasping... but grasping for. Sort of lightly feeling... of course, there is nothing in the hand... what is being felt for is hardly tangible... it's knowledge. The professor isn't trying to feel knowledge, but to get a feel for knowledge. In making this gesture, in saying her words, there is also the subliminal message: "Learn to learn. Seek to know. Understand, but do not manipulate." It was when Prof. P struck that pose and by which completed the image that I realized where I was. And, maybe for the first time, I felt like I was in college.
I went to an Ivy League undergrad.
I go to a top NYC law school.
I date men (well...).
I live in Bed-Stuy.
I don't need more to say,
just more room to say it.
Etc.