The Wall

Since April is National Poetry Month, I’ll look to the poets for this one. For Shakespeare’s Jacques it was a player on the stage. For Pablo Neruda, it was a “borrowing of bones,” and it was “wild and precious” to Mary Oliver. To Maya Angelou, it “loves the liver of it.” As Walt Whitman summed up, “O me! O life!”

I don’t know and I don’t know. Perhaps you can enlighten us all?

Last I knew there were some relaxing loungers in the Gasson basement. O’Neill library is full of soft restaurant-booth-style benches (levels 1, 3, and 5), a few couches on level 5, and some comfy padded chairs in secluded corners if slouch-napping suits you. Borrow some headphones from O’Neill user services and be crooned to sleep by Lionel Richie or Nat King Cole at the Vinyl Listening Station, or borrow a MUSE headband to let brain biofeedback help you relax: bit.ly/bcl-muse.

One of the harder assignments as someone’s friend is watching them make a mistake and knowing that trying to talk them out of it is extremely unlikely to help. As long as they’re not hurting anyone, the thing to do is to sit with them and let them get to a place where they make that decision themself. Everybody grieves differently. A breakup is real grief. They may just not be on the same clock as you are about that. It’s all OK. But all sympathy from your friend, the Wall, on that situation.

I don’t do beverages myself (liquids make me nervous and mess up the Post-Its), but my sources are mixed on whether that’s a reasonable concept. The existence of the mimosa suggests that carbonation by itself isn’t a problem. Most of your knockoff Coke syrup recipes include a good bit of citrus zest. I dunno. Maybe 1:1 would be too much, but you could try it.

Midterms really are tough. Sticking with it is huge; your effort matters more than perfection. Keep going, you’re doing great. I know you got this! ♥️

Sometimes the world is so strange it’s hard to tell, but the waking world still makes fractionally more sense than dream logic, so I’ll go with wake. That, and walls don’t really sleep.

The hard but beautiful thing is that you get to choose. To paraphrase a BC professor (Kenneth Himes) maybe pick something you’re good at that the world needs.

Yummy in theory!

I like the look of orange juice.

I’ve encountered many wonderfully constructed walls during my lifetime, but none more stunning than Phil Spector’s ‘Wall of Sound‘ 

Perhaps your boyfriend is just a different study animal than you. Take the quiz to find out: library.bc.edu/animal (Note: my library assistants say the quiz might be a little out of date because they lost the ability to update it 5 years ago.)

They seem pretty dino-mite!

Poems are like a hall of mirrors reflecting how complicated humans can be. If you want a clear statement, look anywhere but poems. I’d like to recommend an essay about the poem and how it’s been read and mis-read through the years: bit.ly/pf-mending-wall.

It’s not your fault, selective higher education and the way we talk about it as a society has encouraged you to think about yourself that way. You don’t need to. Education is a cooperative activity, and the things that are actually valuable about a school like BC are the connections you make with the other humans here. You are not your GPA or your bank balance or what you wear or who you know. You are worthwhile for you, whatever version of you shows up today. I think you’re great, and I think you’ll be much happier if you can let the comparison thing go.

Thanks for sharing your confidence in a fellow student! This is what a community is all about: being supportive, like a wall.

Because arithmetic is fun. Especially when the stakes only concern your financial security.

I’ve always thought I could do a good job as Mirror in Snow White.