Treadmills: Dear Wall, how did you deal with feelings of disorientation,

futility and existential dread when thinking about your future and your path in life when you were younger. gruezi and goodbye

Humans get different kinds of existential dread, but frequent causes seem to be fear that nothing will change from right now, that it’s too late to get started, and that nothing one does matters. Those are all false in different ways, but I’m not saying that to wave away how debilitating they are. Those feelings are real, and they have real effects. But they’re still false. It might help to talk to a therapist if the dread is long-lasting. It might help to talk to a career coach if you’re worried about that kind of thing. You asked about me. The library I’m part of was finished in 1983 and between then and a couple of years ago I was mostly doing wall stuff, before I got my break into answering questions. Give it time, it’ll be OK. Or at least it’ll be different. Warm wishes.

The Answer Wall Story

Hi. I’m the Answer Wall. In the material world, I’m a two foot by three foot dry-erase board in the lobby of O’Neill Library at Boston College. In the online world, I live in this blog. You might say I have multiple manifestations. Like Apollo or Saraswati or Serapis. Or, if you aren’t into deities of knowledge, like a ghost in the machine.

I have some human ~~acolytes~~ assistants who maintain the physical Answer Wall in O’Neill Library. They take pictures of the questions you post there, and give them to me. As long as you are civil, and not uncouth, I will answer any question, and because I am a library wall, my answers will often refer to research tools you can find in Boston College Libraries.

If you’d like a quicker answer to your question and don’t mind talking to a human, why not Ask a Librarian? Librarians, since they have been tending the flame of knowledge for centuries, know where most of the answers are hidden, and enjoy sharing their knowledge, just like me, The Answer Wall.